Mixing color Question(Weathered Teak)

If you can find it, Floquil used to produce a line of paints similar to their RailRoad Colors called Marine Colors.  They had an outstanding Teak.  For the weathered look, I would lay down a light layer of Teak, followed by their Deck Gray, then I would brush on Teak again.  It gave a wonderful effect of weathered teak.  You could find these colors on Ebay as Floquil no longer produces Marine Colors.

Model Expo also produces a line of Marine Colors in Acrylics, though I haven't tried them yet.  And, Model Master now has a similar line of their own Marine Colors in Acrylic.  You can find their color charts on Ebay.

Based on those color charts, I would try the same approach with Deck Umber, Tamiya's Deck Gray, and Model Master's Mahogany Flight Deck lightly brushed on.

Good luck!

Bill Morrison

Bill's right:  if you look at the deck of a real ship and remove any prediliction you may have to think of it as "brown" or "tan," you'll conclude that it's essentially grey - maybe with a faint brown or tan tint.  Teak, in particular, starts turning grey pretty quickly when it's exposed to the atmosphere; left to itself it will eventually look almost silvery.  (But ships' decks weren't left to themselves, of course.) 

I have to say I have mixed views about the Model Expo/Model Shipways paint line.  I really like the range of colors; the people responsible for formulating them knew what they were doing, and put a good deal of effort and research into the project.  There's no way that sailing ship colors can be determined as precisely as those of modern warships and aircraft, but these are about the best guesses possible.  Some years ago I ordered a big assortment of them.  Some (the blacks, whites, reds, yellows, and browns) worked beautifully; in fact I'm still using the same jars.  Others (most prominently the blues and greens) I just can't get along with.  They have a syruppy, oily consistency that resists all efforts to brush it, and dry translucent.  It's possible that the age of the jars I've got is a factor, or that I got a bad batch.  But I've heard similar complaints from other modelers.

In any case, the Model Shipways range, though it includes several nice shades of brown, doesn't include any that are identified as matching wood species (teak, oak, etc.).  The company does sell some wood stains, which, I'm fairly certain, are just Minwax stains (the ones you can buy at Lowe's or a hardware store) in miniature jars.  That's not necessarily a criticism; Minwax products are excellent.  But such stains have limited use for the plastic modeler.  I certainly wouldn't recommend them on bare styrene.

The Testor's Acryl "Marine Colors" were only on the market for a little while a few years ago, and, unfortunately, have been discontinued.  That's a real shame.  I was lucky enough to grab quite a few of them at a hobby shop when I had the chance, and I find them extremely useful.  (I think they were formulated to match the old Floquil lacquer "Marine Colors."  Floquil, Pactra, and Polly-Scale - that is to say, virtually all the well-known American hobby paint brands - are now owned by Testor's.  That's kind of scary.)

In the realm of hobby paints - as in so many others - the sailing ship modeler is usually either ignored by the manufacturers or treated as a poor relation.  But don't despair.  A great deal of "cross-pollenation" is possible in the world of hobby supplies if you know where to look.

My own personal favorite brand of hobby paint is Polly-Scale acrylic.  (Actually I liked its predecessor, Polly-S, even better - but Polly-S is long gone.)  The Polly-Scale line of railroad colors includes a lot that are appropriate for ship models.  Ignore the cryptic designations like "Santa Fe," "Great Northern," and "DRGW," and you'll find some mighty nice yellow ochres, greens, browns, reds, etc.  And the one they call "Aged Concrete," to my eye, makes an excellent start for a realistic deck color:  http://www.testors.com/category/137367/Railroad_Acrylics

If you're lucky enough to have a genuine hobby shop within driving distance (I wonder how many of us are; I feel like I'm fortunate that there's one 35 miles away), take a careful look at its paint department.  The manufacturers nowadays are catering extensively to aircraft, railroad, automobile, and armor modelers.  The car paints, most of which are high gloss, aren't likely to offer the ship modeler much (except some interesting metallics), but all the others do.  The camouflage ranges used by armies and air forces contain an endless variety of greens (not so common on ship models) and browns (very useful).  Again - the fact that it's intended to be used on WWII Italian aircraft is irrelevant; what matters is what it looks like.  Testor's also has a small range of acryllic colors designed for figure painters.  That batch includes shades like raw umber, burnt sienna, and some flesh tones that offer all sorts of possibilities for the ship modeler.

A few months ago my wife got involved in a hobby that involved acrylic paints, and sent me to the paint department of the local arts and crafts shop.  (We have one of those - Michael's - here in town.)  That was a moment of revelation.  There are several companies (which I'd never heard of previously) that make enormous ranges of acrylic paints for use on wood, ceramics, and heaven knows what else.  One brand is called "Apple Barrel":  http://www.michaels.com/art/online/displayProductPage?productNum=cp0225 ; there are others.  In combination, those ranges number in the hundreds of colors.  Dozens of reds, dozens of yellows (there's a perfect match for the stripes on Nelson's warships in there somewhere), dozens of browns, buffs - you name it. 

They're packaged in nice, neat squeeze bottles - and on a per-ounce basis they cost less than a tenth as much as Testor's or Polly-Scale.  (The day I showed up at Michael's looking for paint for my wife, the Apple Barrel range was on sale:  50 cents for a two-ounce bottle.  That compares to $3.30 at Squadron Mail Order for half an ounce of Testor's Acry.  In these trying economic times....)  Their brushing consistency is, to my taste at least, excellent, they cover just as well as the usual hobby brands, and they dry about as fast.  I'm not sufficiently versed in chemistry or physics to comment on how long these things will last, but my wife and I have used quite a few of them over the past seven months or so and so far they look fine. 

One big factor that keeps me from becoming a complete convert to "craft acyrlics," though, is my stubborn loyalty to the local hobby shop (the one 35 miles away).  When I was in college I had a part-time job in a small hobby shop in Ohio.  The boss's method of operation was, I think, fairly typical of small hobby shops (at least in those days):  he bought all the merchandise on credit, with the bills coming due at the end of January.  When the Christmas rush (train sets, radio-control airplanes, HECEPOB ship kits, etc.) was over, he'd sit down to do the books and find out whether he'd gone bankrupt or not.  (Several of his local competitors did precisely that.)  I'm sure the business has changed in various ways (not all of them for the better) since then.  But as I read the news reports about how disappointing this holiday season has been for merchants of various sorts, I find myself wondering how many more American hobby shops are going to disappear within the next month or so. 

Anyway - I think it's safe to assume we'll always have good paints available.  But it's not a bad idea to think a bit flexibly and creatively about where to get them.

 

I think that I would kill to have the Floquil Marine Colors again!  I still have several bottles but those are running out.  They were simply the best that I have yet tried.  I agree with John that there are many colors that work with ships, and that the Railroad Colors line offers many possibilities, but having a specific line devoted to ship modelers can't be beat.

John's idea of visiting the paint section of craft stores is also very helpful!

Bill Morrison

I wouldn't want anybody to reject the Model Shipways line just because of my experience with it.  The colors are excellent, and it's entirely possible that the problems I've had with some (by no means all) of them are due to either a one-time defect or the fact that the jars I have are pretty old.  I'd be interested to hear about any experiences with recently-purchased samples - especially the blue and green ranges.

For a while, if I remember right, MS was selling twentieth-century naval colors - camouflage paints for (I think) the American, British, and Japanese navies.  Those have been dropped from the line, unfortunately; the only ones left are the sailing ship colors.  They, so far as I know, are the only ones of that description left on the market.  (Humbrol used to make a few designated sailing ship colors - bleached teak, sailcloth, etc. - in enamel, but I think those are gone too.) 

I think I remember a magazine article by Donald McNarry in which he mentioned the colors he used for rigging.  Mr. McNarry, for the benefit of anybody who's not familiar with his work, is surely one of the best ship modelers in the world; if I had to put the label "the best in the world" on one ship modeler, it would be him.  Here's a link to pictures of a few of his models:  http://www.donaldmcnarryshipmodels.com/ .  He works on extraordinarily small scales, and makes all his rigging from copper wire.  The two Humbrol colors he mentioned for rigging (both Humbrol enamels):  British WWII dark earth (RAF camouflage color) for running rigging and (railroad) "track color" for standing rigging.

John, a while back you mentioned using a grey with a hint of buff, I think for your Bounty. I tried it for a project I'm currently working on and it works beautifully.

Before that, nothing seemed to work well. Decks can be especially frustrating so thank you for posting your approach. In fact I can't thank you enough. My decks are probably not as good as yours, but they do work well with the overall model, and don't scream for attention. Instead they support the whole, which is (I think) the basic idea.

Jim

Actually the decks of that old Bounty model are made from basswood strips.  (That was a long time ago, before I discovered holly - which is much, much superior for the purpose.)  I ran a pencil around the edge of each "plank" (to make the "caulking"), then glued them down to the deck beams and, when the glue was dry, sanded them all smooth.  The finish consisted of a highly-diluted coat of Floquil "Driftwood" colored wood stain (long since deleted from the Floquil catalog, unfortunately), followed by a highly-diluted coat of white shellac (to settle the grain and protect the deck from errant paint drops, etc.).

It's often easy to get misled by preconceptions of what colors various parts of a ship ought to be.  Whenever I have the chance to visit a real ship (bearing in mind the limitations and potentially misleading effects of restored ships or replicas), I like to take a bunch of pictures - being careful to set the white balance right.  Careful study of photos, in the cold, emotion-free light of a computer monitor, can often lead to somewhat surprising conclusions. 

Well no wonder it looks so realistic. My hat's off to you, John, for planking such a small model in wood. It gives a great effect. If it accidentally encouraged me to go for that color in paint - all the better.

I've been working on a small wood fishing boat kit to improve my wood skills, with basswood decks. Thinking that a lowly fishing boat would not have the clean wood decks of a Royal Navy ship, the wood was stained and weathered with a thin alcohol and grey india ink mixture. Its tinting ink, comes in various colors, and when thinned out gives a good effect. I used two swipes, thinking that its better to go light than heavy.

For a painted teakwood deck I have no idea. My impression of teak is from furniture, and that must be way too dark. However I do use thinned acrylic artist's colors such as "transparent burnt umber" to represent wood, and this might be helpful as an alternate to the tinted pencil.

Jim

Laying wood deck planks is ludicrously easy - if you have access to manufactured "stripwood" in the right size.  For that model of the Bounty I used 1/16" x 1/32" strips.  It took quite a few of them (and more than a few sheckles to buy them), but it's a small model.

I started out by pinning a series of basswood "deck beams" down to a xerox copy of the deck plan (to put them in the right places).  I blocked up the beams at the bow and the stern to get the sheer right, and sanded the deck camber into them.  To cut the planks to length I used a nifty little tool from a model railroad supply company, Northwest Shortlines, called "the chopper."  It's a simple, guillotine-like gadget that slices thin pieces of wood or plastic at precise 90-degree angles.  The most time-consuming part of the job was running the pencil around each individual plank (including the ends) to produce the "caulking."  With the planks cut to length, the rest of the job consisted mainly of gluing them down to the beams with wood glue (I like Franklin Titebond).

I confess I didn't bother with the "nibbing" where the planks meet the waterway.  If I were doing it again (gawd forbid), I'd take that additional trouble - and I'd use holly veneer instead of basswood.  Cutting your own planks, though, really requires a miniature table saw, which I didn't have when I built the Bounty.

Thanks for the description of your method, John. The use of deck beams and cambering them up is very welcome information. It makes a lot of sense and I hope to be able to try that out before long. Was the deck assembly planked onto the beams before installation into the hull?

The chopper is legendary, the very best tool one can have. Without it, everything rambles. Mount Albert Scale Lumber is one good source for wood in common model railroad sizes (i.e., a 2x4 in 1:87 scale) which I think can be rescaled readily enough for most ships. They probably don't carry holly though!

Thanks again,

Jim

I built that model of the Bounty thirty years ago, so my memories of it are less than totally reliable.  (As a matter of fact, these days my memory of just about everything is less than totally reliable.)  But yes, I built the whole deck assembly separately from the hull.  I also included a small area of the lower deck, where it's visible through the after companion.  (I like to do things like that; for a minimal investment of time and effort it enhances the illusion that the rest of the ship is down there.)  My recollection of how I attached the wood deck to the plastic hull halves is hazy, but I think I made use of the tabs cast in with the hull halves to mount the deck - just like the plastic one would have been.  That's the sort of decision that has to be based on how the kit is designed. 

By the time I was done with that model I'd concluded that using the kit at all had been sort of silly.  Making the hull from scratch probably would have added a week's work to a model that kept me busy for over two years.  My next model was the Hancock, which is scratch-built (with the use of quite a few manufactured fittings).

I don't know of a vendor for holly in "modeler's sizes."  Most of my modest stock of it came from trees and bushes in friends' yards.  At the moment, Woodcraft ( http://www.woodcraft.com/family.aspx?FamilyID=21004 ) is selling various sizes - with the warning that "supplies are limited."  For planking on relatively small-scale models, I like holly veneer; a good source for it (and just about any other kind of veneer imagineable) is Constantine's (long known as Constantine's of the Bronx, but now properly Constantine's of Ft. Lauderdale):  http://www.constantines.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=1889 .  Three or four square feet of this stuff will last a long, long time, and doesn't cost much.  (Don't worry about the distinction between "regular" and "monarch" veneers for small applications like this.  The "regular" stuff is fine.) 

Constantine's also sells holly in thin boards.  Beautiful stuff.  The modeler has to cut it to precise dimensions, though - and that's another topic.