I was wondering if anybody knew how wide the black stripe between the lower and upper hull colors, called boot topping I think, was? I know the Japanese didn't do this but every other country did. How thick should this stripe be on my Warspite and Indianapolis be?

Good question, ran into the same problem on my fletcher, so I just eyeballed it. Also, how do you get that to bea perfect line and clean? I tryed using layers of tape to get it but the paint ran through. Does it just need practice, something other than tape or simply more layers?

For 1/700 Waterline 1/32 ~ 1/16 inch is fine ( how full is your ship?). I use black decal stripes for my 1/350 full hull ships. L'Aresenal from france just put out some decal boottops I believe but I just use whatever black dtripes I can get. For the Fletcher 1/8" is good..Mike T

For 1/350 scale mine are about 1/4". Thats because I use 1/4" tape. I paint the hull along the boot area black. After 3 days to let it dry and cure properly I tape the black painted boot area then shoot the tape with black again. This seals the tape edges. Then I paint the bottom insignia red darkend slightly with black. I'm not concerned with overspray as I'm going to paint the upper hull after the paint drys. Then I mask the lower hull at the boot tape and spray the upper hull. Once the paint has started to dry I remove the masking by lifting off the tape I placed over the boot area exposing the black boot. Done. Only masked once. This process works well if you are going to brush paint as the second coat of black paint over the boot tape will seal it and prevent bleed under from your next color. Though I spray paint I use this method because it saves me the time I don't spend masking more than once. If you are going to brush paint, thin the over paint a little so you don't build up a thick layer causing noticable ridges.