Kits:
AFV I-19 (1/350); AFV Type VIIB U-Boat
(1/350)
Paints:
I-19; Golden & Tristar Fluid
Acrylics, Floquil Acrylics;
U-Boat: Vallejo Model Air, Revell
Germany Aqua Color Acrylics
Weathering:
AK Interactive Washes & Grime;
Vallejo Acrylic Wash; Rustall System; Doc O'Brien Pigments
I do a ship, plane, tank cycle when modeling. As my last ship took three months, I decided to keep things even by taking it easy a little. But not too easy because ship modeling requires pain for growth. So I grabbed a pair of 350 scale AFV Club subs from the stash. This was my first outing with AFV and the kits were very nice: the U-Boat even included plastic parts for all of the PE. (It came in handy: PE is easy to damage when handling.) Oh, no mistake on scale here. The Japanese simply built great big whopping subs while the Germans preferred the Euro road car style.
What I really wanted to do was to turn this project into an exercise in ship weathering. Oddly, I think ship models are often under weathered. In the real world they live in salt water and that's nasty stuff. I've got a lot of film at home. Add to that the incredible resources at Sub Sim (including a 50 page article about U-boat paints, markings and weathering by Doug Martindale) that include photos of over 700 of Germany's 1000 U-boats, many showing a serious disregard for tidiness. Martindale described some of the problems faced. He claims that anti-fouling agents in paint will leach out leading inevitably to serious fading above and especially below the waterline. Subs were out for a long time: a U-boat patrol of six weeks was not unusual and could go up to ten. American and Japanese subs, built for the Pacific expanses, could be out longer. And let's remember that a sub was effectively under water even when on the surface. Documentary films from Germany and America show subs being pounded in heavy water. Martindale also claimed that if a boat did a full patrol it always returned with a fringe, maybe two feet wide, of organic matter just under the waterline. I drive by oil tankers several times a week and when I see one unloaded you get a good look at several feet of ship under the waterline and it is just as described. Very evident fading is always there; a greenish splotch is often visible and oxidation invariably present. (The degree of presence varies somewhat. But when bad, you get a kind of zone of rust ranging from pink to brown depending upon whether the oxidation has eaten through the paint altogether or not.) Martindale quotes some German sailors describing badly rusted boats has being covered from end to end. So I decided to give the U-boat what I think was an appropriate degree of weathering after return from a five week patrol.
If I roughed up the U-Boat a little, I decided to clobber the I-Boat. This was not simply a medical experiment. Japanese subs could be out for a very long time. They also sailed in waters that were very warm and extremely rich in nutrients. Unfortunately the photo and film record for Japanese subs is not what we'd like. (I might point out that when "super sub" I-400 surrendered after V-J Day, the American vessel that took it - seriously rusted itself - made a color film of the operation. I-400 was seriously rusted and it was on its first and only patrol.) The American record, however, is copious. In the fascinating series "Color of War" they have an episode dedicated to submarines. One section is called "Leave" which shows happy sailors boozing at the Royal Hawaiian. But at the beginning it shows boats returning from patrol. They look a fright: some are a genuine mess. The section ends when serviced boats begin a new patrol - it looks like they changed their clothes. Also, if you look at the photo and film record of USN operations in 1944-45 when surface ships were out for extended missions just like submarines, some warships had huge hunks of paint stripped from the side and filled with rust. If American ships looked like this, I believe I can assume that a weary I-boat could have really shown fatigue. (Or as the British used to say, it would be "distressed.")
I paid a lot of attention to the right paints. With Martindale's aid I think I gave the U-Boat an excellent match. Most U-Boats under the waterline were painted a muddy greenish grey. Vallejo Model Air Grey Green (RLM 66) is a fine match if Martindale's data is right. Many boats were painted RAL 7001 above the line - a light grey with a streak of blue. Revell Aqua Color makes this color. German decks were dark wood painted black. As the paint would wear, by the patrol's end, the deck would be a varying shade black and brown. Ditto on the I-Boat except that Japanese decks were lighter to begin with. So for the U-Boat I washed and drybrushed brown onto a black deck. On the I-boat, I applied a light coat of buff over the black primer and gave it black and brown AK/Vallejo washes along with a neat Golden black glaze. Japanese warships wore some variety of medium grey which varied according to which base it was last painted. According to the data I found, this color too had a touch of blue in it. Consequently I decided not to use Tamiya's Sasebo Arsenal because it appeared too neutral. Instead I made a chromatic black which would show a slight blue tint when mixed with white. I mixed red and sepia acrylics for the hull. (German boats never had red paint. AFV's box art shows red paint and so do many comic books. It didn't happen. The Japanese did use it.) Both hulls were primed Floquil Engine black and as I applied three progressively lighter shades of the respective paints, I tried to leave dark zones across the board. Armor fans know all about this stuff: indeed, I treated both subs like tanks. This was especially true with streaking which I did a lot of. I found the AK "streaking grime" and washes to work very nicely and used them on both boats.
I intentionally used varied techniques for my own information. As subs show discoloration, scratches and chipping under the best of circumstances, I decided to use salt weathering on the U-Boat. This not only gives a kind of fade because of the salt, but also leaves little "chips" as you overpaint with a lighter shade. This technique is very good and I intend to make wide use of it on many subjects. I skipped the salt on the I-Boat in favor of dot fading with oils. Although this works very nicely, I think one could skip it if you used enamel streaking products (or made your own) along with varying the paint shades and salt if wanted. On the I-Boat I also used an AK product called 'Extreme Effects" which works like hairspray. I wanted to use this below the waterline to take out good sized hunks of paint. (I tapped on rust paint and pigments on the U-Boat.) This was especially important because the hull was painted a rust like color. And, as noted, I wasn't interested in being subtle with the I-Boat. The rust was very interesting. I use very little rust on armor. (I try to make up for it by throwing on dirt and grime by the bucket.) Unfortunately the AK brew didn't work as well as I would have liked because it was too effective. (I did not put this stuff over the entire surface. The areas where it was applied were covered by the last and lightest color of paint: I also marked the zones on the instructions.) The red paint came off okay but I was down to the primer fast despite giving the model three coats of Future. I think this would work much better if one put on enamel or lacquer clear. Anyway, in the rust zones I applied very light, almost pinkish orange, paint around the periphery and moved toward an almost pure sepia in the middle. I then put pigments below the waterline to give the rust some body. But to cap it off, I used an old tool of railroaders, the Rustall system. This is very good stuff. It's basically liquid rust so it builds up only slowly. But it's a perfect color for streaking (I tried to avoid all streaking below the waterline) and used it to almost blend all of the other stuff in the rust zones. I also used their brew to make a flat surface. I think this is a simple solvent, mostly water, mixed with something like mica. When it dries, the effect is very flat but irregular: sort of blotchy. That was exactly what I wanted. (Their panel wash is acrylic dye and works very nicely. I also applied a line of AK "slime green grime" just below the waterline on the I-Boat: I was a little worried that the U-Boat was too small to make it work right. It's there if you look at some of the close-ups.
Pics below.
Eric
