New member help with 1/700

The forums here can cover any topic you want to bring up.  Sometimes folks are talking about basics, sometimes some pretty advanced techniques.  Ask away.

For the paint bottle problem I would suggest trying the "painting and airbrushing" forum.  There is frequently a thread on this problem there, and looking at older threads may give you some ideas.

As far as portholes, while you can paint them, it is not a difficult task to drill them out and glaze them with liquid glazing material (or thinned white glue).  This, of course, represents an uncovered porthole.  From pictures I've seen of ships ready for action, the portholes seem to look the same color as rest of hull, so I just leave them undrilled and painted hull color.

I'm not an expert in ship building.  It's something I got into only within the last couple of years, but I've finished a few now.

For portholes, I just add a black wash of thinned acrylic craft paint and let it go at that.

My most recent completion was USS New Orleans for the Pearl Harbor Group Build.  Here's a photo:

If it's any help, you can follow the progress for building her here:

http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/29/t/154051.aspx?sort=ASC&pi240=6

Otherwise, there are a number of threads in the ship forum showing builds going on, and they can be pretty useful.

Good luck with your project.  And please remember to post photos.  We like photos.

I purchased a plexiglass nail polish rack that will hold around 95 paint bottles.  I saw a modeler on u-tube with one.