Author Topic: Hull weathering  (Read 8708 times)

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Offline Belgium Crazy Team

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Hull weathering
« on: 24 September 2008, 14:41:54 »
Weathering a WWII ship

On the internet you can find a lot of tips and trics how to weather ships, trains, cars,...
These tips you can use to make your model look more realistic.

This is not a how-to but my view on how to make models look more realistic.

General information:
It's important to know that in world war II the maintenance on the ships hull was not done regularly.
When the ships were in the harbor the upperstructure was repaired, cleaned and repainted.  But for the hull their was almost no time.

If the hull was repainted in a new camouflage scheme, most of the time this was done over the existing layers of paint.  The colors were mixed on board.  They had a large supply of basic colors (fe white) and some pigments.
They also received orders how much pigment (a percentage) they should add to the basic color. As you probably know this is not accurate.

The superstructure:
On the superstructure there was a lot more maintenance than on the hull itself.
So on the superstructure you won't find the amount of rust and degraded paint as on the hull.  On the areas were a lot of movement is you will see that the paint will degrade and eventually you will see rust.
In general this means that the colors are faded but not a lot of rust will be visible.

The hull:
This was something different.  The hull will shown a lot of degraded paint and also a lot of rust.

If the hull is paneled in the joins of 2 panels rust will build up.
This can be simulated with heavily thinned paint in rust color. For this I use Humbroll nr. 89 thinned with white spirit.
You add this with a brush in the join and you will see the paint be running in the joins. As you are not happy with the results you can undo your weathering with a towel with a little white spirit on it.  This must be done BEFORE the paint dries. You can see this in the picture of HMT Coldsteamer.

When a new camouflage scheme is painted the hull is most of the time not sanded.  The new scheme is painted over the existing one.  In some places of the hull you will see the new scheme that is degraded and the old scheme that will come through.

To achieve this you will have to paint the 2 schemes.  First you paint the hull in the original camouflage scheme.  This has to be done as clean as possible. Then as a second step you paint the second scheme over the first one.  But here you must pay attention that your second layer does not hid the first one.  If you airbrush this, don't airbrush big panels in 1 time.  Try to airbrush square panels of 5 cm.  In some panels you make sure that you can't see the underlying layer in other panels you let the underlying scheme come through. This is applied in the Aircraft carrier HMS Fencer

When you finished the hull and you are pleased about the result, you can add rust and faded paint.
From the points where water runs from the deck downwards, you can use thinned white to fade the paint. 
On the places where water runs down from the hull you can also add rust.

Sometimes I also use a water based black that is heavily thinned with water (1 drop in 4ml water). This mixture I spray all over the model and when the water evaporates you can see that in all edges and corners a subtle black touch is added.  I didn't try this with white spirit thinned paints because the white spirit evaporates to fast.


To make this realistic I photographed several boats in a harbor to see how and where rust builds up.
Look also at old photos of the ship you are building, even in Black & white you will noticed where rust is visible.

Try not to add a lot of rust at once.  But add some rust, look at the model, and then decide where you want to add more.

Anyone who has more tips one making a model more realistic, reply one this one. ;D

Kurt