Howdy. I got 3 1/700 scale carriers given to me as basket cases. They were going to be thrown away, so I saved them. It never occured to me to take any "before" pictures save for one. The first thing I did was give all three of them a good soap and water bath, as they were filthy beyond recognition almost. One is Hasegawa's Essex-class kit. it was painted all-over single color which I was able to match as FS36440 flat gull gray, with the flight deck a much darker gray, but must have been a mix, as none of my color chips matched it.
The Essex-class cleaned up really well, so using the flat gull gray as the lightest color, I penciled the outline of Yorktown's measure 33/10a camo scheme, and got out the brushes. I masked what I could, and brushed the darkest color first, then the next lighter one. Areas where it was impractical to try to mask, I free-handed. I left the dark grey deck too. Yeah, I know it's not 100% correct, but still at least she'll be on my shelf instead of in the landfill where she was headed!![Approve [^]](/emoticons/icon_smile_approve.gif)
Next, I started on the masts and radars, they were all broken off and missing. got a lot more to do there but she'll be cool. I forgot to mention click on the pics they get bigger.
The others, I believe are Tamiya's Hornet and Enterprise. Enterprise has the same dark grey on the deck as the Essex-class, but I matched her sides to light ghost gray slightly yellowed.. Havent done anything to her yet except scratch build the foremast and radars, they were completely gone. Amazingly, only 2 gun barrels are broken off. The Hornet is the only one I havent done anything to yet. She is mostly assembled, and no paint at all.
There were 18 of the original aircraft left too, so I bought 2 sets of Hasegawa's 1/700 naval plane sets. this gives me a total of 98 to spead out between them, unless I build the Hornet on the Doolittle raid, then I'll get the B-25 set for it.
I'll show more when I'm done. Thanks for listening!!