It’s been a very exciting few evenings at the shipyard as I add the external colours.
My method of application has been unsophisticated. No masking tape. No airbrush.
I painted the ochre bands on the sides in roughly the right areas. Using the ochre mix, diluted 10% with water, applied by paintbrush, three coats, gave an acceptable finish. I can’t see any brush strokes.
Then drawing the boundaries between black and yellow in pencil by reference to plan sheet 7- just measuring the positions of the lines above and below the gun ports as per the plans. Then connecting the points using a piece of leftover pear planking strip as a guide, drawing the lines in.
The lower black lines simply follow the bottoms of the wales. This is not authentic. The ship should have the black paint continued further down and then the bottom of the ship coppered.
But in this case I wanted to display my planking.
Inspiration here was from the beautiful Indefatigable model created by Maurice @Blue Ensign and the equally gorgeous Sphinx by @Ronald-V who both took this approach. Thanks guys. (And thanks for the encouragement here too Maurice.)
Then, painting up to the lines as best as I can in AK smoke black (again, diluted with 10% water). This is where a range of paintbrushes come in handy. Flat brushes in sizes “1, 2 and 4”, and a couple of those cheap nail artist brushes I mentioned in an earlier post. Admittedly, doing this by hand, rather than by masking tape, needs a few iterations, touching up the line with ochre or black, and finally sorting out any blemishes with a 30/0 brush.
Going against everything that’s holy in the world of scale modelling, there’s something about my imperfect lines between black and ochre that I like. They’re not ruler-straight.
Would these lines be ruler-straight on a real ship? With five minutes research on google, I gather that ship painting would be done by sailors hanging over the edge on a “bosum’s chair”- ie dangling on a rope- so I feel that my imperfect line might be more authentic that a ruler-straight line.
To my eye, this sort of detail makes the model feel organic and human. (And it’s not just me making excuses for my shoddy workmanship.)
I’d draw a parallel here to those perfect rope spirals that some modellers do when rigging cannons. They’re very clever and beautifully neat- but, to my eye, they feel implausibly tidy on a working warship.
Even if someone were to explain to me that ropes were indeed placed like that as a matter of military discipline on real ships, I’d still do mine more like messy hanks- on the basis of my “do I like it?” test.
So my imperfect, hand-painted line is not as straight as it could have been if I'd done it with masking tape.
With the exterior painting done, the gunports could be touched up in red- and the guns put back into position, with their breaching ropes in place.
This seems like a good point to pause and take some photos.
Other things I like at this stage.
The laser-engraved planking details on the pear pieces show up beautifully after painting.
Similarly, after painting, my planks look real- we can see the joins and there’s hints of woodgrain and of thick maritime paint being applied to the hull.
If I were picking faults, I’d say that the gaps between some of my planks are maybe a third of a millimetre, which at 1/64 scale, would equate to 2.1cm on the real ship and so the ship would sink. But this is not a real ship so, meh, it’s fine.
A small bonus- not in the instructions- is that there’s a set of flintlocks for the guns. I found this out from someone else’s log, possibly on the old MSW site, but I’ve forgotten who. Apologies to that person you find this log and find yourself uncredited here.
I took advice from @modelshipdood 's Surprise log as to how to add them in the right orientation; and followed his hint that leaving them as naked brass means that they can be seen. They’re so tiny that they’d become invisible if blackened.
These really are very small details- but they're provided in the kit, so I can't bear to leave them in the box.
By
Mowzer ·
