Portholes on warships, to drill out or not to drill out, that is the question......

I have gone both ways at one time or another. Generally, I leave them alone if they are deep enough and are molded sharply enough. If the portholes are little more than dimpled suggestions, then I drill them out. Of course, it is a truly tedious chore, even worse than painting a bunch of ships boats. And then, even when you drill them out, you need to make sure you can't look all the way through the model to the other side, which means you should probably put a sheet of black-painted plastic inside to prevent that. In the end, have you really improved the model by doing all that work? I would say no, unless you plan on doing some lighting. I think the last portholes I drilled were on a couple of Tamiya Momi-class DDs, due to the poor appearance of the molded ones.

I drilled out the row of circular windows on the bridge of my Tamiya 1/350 USS Fletcher using a vise grip, and in my ham-handedness, the row of holes turned out just crooked enough to notice. If I had to do it all again, I'd have just painted the dimples black, then maybe overlayed with drops of clearcoat or future.

Jose

I do not. They are flush to the hull, or close enough to be that way at 1/350. Also they never reveal the interior except if lighted at night, and wartime ships never ever would let that happen.

I use a black paint pen, just fill in the inside of the raised ring.

It Very rare;

   I usually Don't drill out ports on warships unless they are above a cerrtain scale .1/350 or 1/700 ,no way! Like "G" I just dimple them with a black pen , clearcoat and leave well enough alone . T.B.

If you can see them in a photo of the real thing, at the time frame you are modeling. It seems to me that most warships would have deadlights in place of clear glass in wartime.

Depends on how I am displaying it. If I depict it at anchor, yes, I drill out the holes and fill with window transparency material. If the ship looks cleared for action, no, the portholes stay blocked.  If status indetermined by how I display it I just imagine how it would look best- or flip a coin.

Another tip.

Check your photo references.  During WW II, after Pearl Harbor, USN warships welded the ports closed.

I came across this in my CV 6 and CV 5 builds.  In many photos of the ships the hulls look flush.  I did this, by drilling out the ports, then filling them with stock rod and sanding flush.

Tedious?  Yeah it was, but necessary to match photos and represent the ships as they appeared.

I do... at least for 1/200 scale. I also grind out behind them to make a thin porthole "rim" effect:

Is it tedious? Yeah. Is it worth it? I think so:

I agree with the others that it depends on the ship's status (so, check your photographic references!).  For me, it's also a question of diminishing returns, in the scale I build, 1/700.  They're just too small, and unless I'd build an elaborate jig, it'd be too easy to misalign them.

Also, are you building a ship during a phase of its life, in which its  portholes were plated over, to provide more integrity against flooding?  Maybe you need to fill molded-on portholes, instead.