painting ship decks - procedure?

Most fittings can be attached/assembled to the deck before hand. The photo etched has to go on before painting in my opinion. I use MM enamel for the color of the ship (whatever gray), this also serves as a primer, and is airbrushed as the first thing in painting.

Next if different colours for fittings are required you can brush paint them. That is third.

Then paint the deck wood color. You will have to touch up some of the fittings and probably some of the deck no matter how careful a painter you are .

I leave off some of the bigger fittings and superglue them on later .

I then spray the whole ship with MM flat laquer. Then I do a diluted black oil paint wash.

Then drybrush if it is needed anywhere .  Last thing is to attach stretched sprue for the antenna/wires/rigging.

Use good brushes from a real art store. They aren't cheap but will last and do the best job. This will make the joint you  mention from photo etch to plastic, easier to paint with a good brush.

If you ask ten people they will all do it differently, you will have to find your way through experience, as to what works for you.

Whatever you do don't rush it, or the paint from drying/curing.

Note that Tamiya acrylics are notoriously difficult to brush paint, if you haven't worked with them before. I do use their hull red as a base for most hulls, and airbrush it.

There are many different methods; experiment and find out which one works best for you. Sometimes you may switch things around a bit depending on the circumstances; but that's really just part of the problem solving.

My preference is to assemble and glue together all of the ship's major pieces, leaving off details such as gun, gun directors, etc. Sometimes, if there's a deck pattern to camouflage and the guns match, I put them on as it just makes sense. I spray the anti-fouling first as I find it easier to mask from that point up. Vertical color generally before deck color as there's less masking to do and I think it's of an easier varity, but your mileage may vary. Sometimes I'll do half & half depending on shapes.

Some people prefer to  hand-paint the detailed bits after doing the deck and in that case the decks may be the logical place to start for them and then mask off and paint the vertical surfaces. PE I generally leave off until the major painting is done, but I can be pretty ham-handed, so if you're careful and exact enough you can put it on before painting.

Mike Ashey, in his Kalmbach book, "The Basics of Ship Modeling" offers the technique of painting the entire deck first.  Then he goes back with gazillions of tiny masking tape snippets and masks around all of the deck fittings, the bulkheads, gun tubs and the like.  Then he airbrushes the superstructure color.  Remove the masking snippets and touch-up

I've done it.  Its a lot of prep work but the results look good when complete.

Its a lot easier to mask the flat deck and leave the raised detail exposed than to do the opposite.

Or you could do what I do, avoid ship models with wooden decks

Failing that, I brush paint Tamiya Deck Tan on the wood parts after spot-painting selected planks or areas a darker brown or tan first.  

Spray paint the deck and superstructure P.E. first. Then on the deck rails glue it to the "steel" (gray) lip of the deck with a "dot" of CA applied by a fine wire. Like in welding only tack it down with "fast" thin CA. once in place go back and glue as you need to. Don't mess with the wooden part at all. After the glue is dry go in and touch up with gray or clear flat.  For large stuff like hull red you can use spray can red primer from wal-mart then mask and shoot above waterline hull gray & waterline (just a bucket's worth please). The small deck mounted stuff then becomes a decesion to scrape off and replace (like chains,paravanes etc.) or paint in place. Depends on the scale.  OR  mask the superstructure spray the deck wood but not hull edges and hand paint the small stuff. Get rid of the molded on chains no matter what and drill out chain & hause holes. Should work out O.K.   Don't forgit murphy's law applies and if you don't like it try another method but it's all fairly similar.    have a happy ship.....

            G.L.