Ideas for simulated water?

I've never make sea dioramas, but plenty of respect for those that do, it's quite an art form to make them realistic.

Here's a nice PT-109 build, though not in English.

It's part 1 of 6, skip to 5 if you only want to see the water, but I suggest watching the whole build - this guy does wonders for a 1960's oob kit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki86BZTq_90

While clear acrylic medium is popular and can work well, the problem is that there are several thicknesses and brands, each works different. It depends on how high you want the waves and whether you want a fancy bow and stern wave.  You need to experiment with brands and thicknesses.

I see someone has already mentioned PLEXI , so I won,t bother with that . What I do is go to my landlord,s stained glass supplier. She carries a glass in sea blue transluscent that is appropriately called "waterglass" It has the fine mixed wave shape for say  , quiet water or at least a calm sea . This lady told me that she can get the same glass with a more profound pattern to simulate the ocean with a light breeze . I then fit the ship to this glass and using "MODGE PODGE"  fasten the ship in place  . Let this stuff dry . Then take acryllics and blend the passage of water down the ship,s side and the wake as well as the bow wave . There ,that,s another method you can try .   tankerbuilder

For a water line model of that scale you could try rippled plexiglass. Trace the hull shape on it and paint the wake of the ship on the underside first with an airbrush then paint the rest blue once the wake has dried. You can dry brush the wave tops after with white paint. It doesn't look too bad. This is the simplest and easiest way I know of. It really only works well with 1/700 scale and smaller. I did a 1/1250 scale convoy with this method (1 corvette and three liberty ships).

Here is a compendium of methods for simulating water: http://www.shipmodels.info/mws_forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=37923

Hope you'll find it helpful...

rea00cy

Hi Travis-

I have tried many different methods but I think the latest is pretty good-  and cheap.  It uses aluminum foil.  You can see how it looks on my Trump Arizona here and read about how it was done:

http://www.modelingmadness.com/reviews/misc/ships/us/robertoarizona.htm

good luck!

Len