First, a thank you to the several FineScale members who have offered suggestions about the best way to install deck drains on my conversion of a Haven-class S.S. Hope hospital ship model to a model of U.S.S. Repose.
Based on those suggestions, I bought a recommended scriber, some thick 3M tape to use as a guide for scribing, and some .1mm round styrene rods. As the attached photo shows, your ideas worked (and the drains are much easier to install than I ever dreamed they would be):
Now the bad news: I have given up on the first attempt because of multiple problems. The model, based on Revell's release in the mid-1950s of a U.S.S. Haven model and using the same moulds, is just godawful. Nearly all parts have huge amounts of flash and sinkholes on them, and few of them fit well. Both halves of the hull and the upper deck were badly warped, although I was able to glue them together, barely, and the hull still needs some putty. The main deck had to be trimmed a great deal to get it seated properly in the hull.
What really got to me, however, was painting the forcastle, poop deck, and helicopter pad dark grey, the wooden main and first decks tan, and white for the deck houses and equipment. I used brushes and Tamiya acrylics — I don't have an airbrush, which I think would be pretty much useless for the decks anyway. By the time I learned about acrylic retarders, I had made a streaky mess of the decks and the deck houses. I also tried to do some "weathering" on the ship's solid railings to make seem more like real railings, but they just looked dirty, so I repainted them white.
Overall, the model is poorly designed, poorly moulded, and grossly inaccurate in scale and detail. For example, the Seahorse helicopter that comes with the kit is at least a third smaller than it should be, and the deck houses, masts, derrecks, and lifeboats seem to have little similarity to those of the actual ships. Still, because I was a patient on Repose in 1966, I want a model of Repose, so I've started working on another one, this time of U.S.S. Haven, which is identical to the Hope model except for instructions and decals.
I'm currently installing the deck drains, and plan to spraypaint the decks and other superstructure components white, and then add the grey decking, armed with acrylic paint, retarder, and a couple of new, small, angle-tipped brushes. Hopefully things will go more smoothly this time, especially if it the hull doesn't fall off a shelf and break like it did on Sunday! Thank god for modern glues and tools.
There is just no way that my model Repose will look like the real Repose. But at least for me, it will be a version of what the real ship looked like, and that's all that's necessary. I'm building it for me, nor for a judge. The other models I've completed since I reentered the hobby in mid-2019 — an HP.52 Hampden bomber, a UH-34 Seahorse helicopter, and a T-34 Mentor trainer — are similarly inaccurate, but they mean a lot to me because they represent significant parts of my personal history.
Bob