Bring it on, Tom, I'm waiting in anticipation for your commissioning, mate! I'm sure it will be worth it! Don't forget to upload your pics into the "Finished" album in the campaign section too...

~Gunny

Hi Gunny

I am all ready to slap on some paint for Dreadnought project.

I will take some pictures before I do it.

I still have all my superstructures separate etc. but I am wondering how you go about painting your ship projects.

In particular the hull and then the deck. The deck on mine appears to be mostly timber interdispersed with steel structures. I am a little unsure how to attack this.

Do I spray my hull grey then my deck timber and handpaint the greystructures situated on the deck?

Or spray it all grey and hand paint in the deck?

The superstructures and guns etc I can paint separate its just the deck/hull area I am unsure of.

I know this is a pretty basic question but some help for an old armour modeller before I start might make it all more easier.

Thanks.

Regards

Sean

Hi Sean!
Glad to hear that progress has been made on your entry, mate, but now things are going to get a little tricky for you...I paint as I go, meaning, I finish the lower hull first, then build the upper deck, finish paint the deck, attach the deck structure to the lower hull, and then proceed to build my superstructures and paint these before I attach them to the upper decks...(only after dry fitting each and every part to make sure the fit is good!) the point where you are now, is going to need a good deal of handpainting...if I were you, I would paint the upper deck first, (if you are spraying), mask it off well, then spray the lower hull...then you can proceed to either hand paint the superstructures, etc, or you can mask off the lower hull (if need be) and spray the superstructures (while the deck is still masked).
Hope this helps ya out some, Sean, and looking forward to seeing some photo's of your build!
~Gunny

I took a different approach with the 1/350 Missouri, but that was driven by the fact the hull is so long in that scale.

I did the hull completely separately from the deck and superstructure. I built each superstructure piece separately (as much as possible) and painted them when they were completed. Because I had a lot of small items on each of the decks which needed to be "haze gray" and the deck itself (horizontal surfaces) needed to be deck blue and I could not figure out any way to mask either one after the other was painted, I took the "backwards" approach. I painted the entire deck haze gray first (getting all the small bits right) with my airbrush, and then painted the whole deck by hand.

I wound up having each of the three main deck sections almost totally complete and painted and the hull painted separately. My last step was to add the three deck pieces to the hull.

But again, this was so I didn't have to handle the whole ship (hull) while I was doing all the work on the superstructure.

You can check out the inprogress pictures in the Dreadnaught Gallery to see how it went. If I ever do another 1/350 ship of that size, that's exatly how I'd do it again, and I'm not so sure it's not exactly the same way I might do a smaller ship as well.

Tom

Thanks Guys graet info.

I will nut it out before I start painting.

Toms way was how I had kinda worked it out.

But I am still open to ideas.

Regards

Sean