Hull Color

I like Mineral Red from the model railroad side of the hobby shop,   or perhaps some red primer from Lowes

Modern US Navy Haze Gray is Fed-Std 26270.  Modelmaster Neutral Gray is 36270  (satin vs flat).

Newly finished decks are closely approximated by MM Gunship Gray.   New flight deck non-skid is approximated by MM Engine Gray.   It all weathers together after a few weeks in the sun & salt

White Ensign's Colourcoats also makes a modern haze gray and deck gray. Great paints

Poly Scale acrylic paints also has Haze Gray, which I have found to be perfect.  They also have a color called (Weatherdeck Blue" which I find to be a little too dark for small scale models.

Bill Morrison

warshipguy wrote:

Poly Scale acrylic paints also has Haze Gray, which I have found to be perfect.  They also have a color called (Weatherdeck Blue" which I find to be a little too dark for small scale models. Bill Morrison

The PollyScale Haze Gray is their version of the WII color.   The US Navy's camouflage colors in WWII were based on a purple/blue system.   To my eye the PollyScale Haze Gray is too lavender to match the current neutral (i.e. pure gray) color used today.

Likewise the WWII Weatherdeck blue is too blue (IMO) for the current neutral dark gray used on modern USN vessels.  

EdGrune,

The Haze Gray by Polly Scale looks fine to me. I see no lavender there. It looks precisely like all the U.S.N. surface ships that I saw throughout my 24 years in the U.S. Navy. And, I did say that the Weatherdeck Blue is too dark. What more can I say?  I may be blinded by age, but I like the Polly Scale Haze Gray and have painted all of my contemporary U.S.N. ships in that color with success.

Bill Morrison

There comes a point where you have to look at the menu and decide if your personal choice is chocolate, vanilla or strawberry.

 Ed presents the exact color match used on the full sized ship - Federal Standard 27270.  I guarantee from the time I was the Chief Engineer of a waship in the shipyard with access to the yard drawings that included the color specs - that is the correct color for the full sized critter.

Warshipguy presents the Hazegray color that is technically matched to the WWII camouflage shade, and is no longer in use today.  But he tells you with all his years of experience that it looks right to him.  Have you heard "If it looks right, then it is right"?  It's tough to argue with that.

And I will tell you that I believe that 36270 (ModelMaster Neutral Gray) looks too dark on a model to me.  I believe that ModelMaster Dark Ghost Gray (FS 36320) is just a few smidgens lighter than the Neutral Gray enough that it looks "right" to me to represent modern U.S. Navy hull color on a model.  I've got a bunch of years of experience around ships, too.

So I STRONGLY suggest that before you paint your huge investment of a 1/350 aircraft carrier, you should buy a bottle of each and spray a good-sized area with each.  See whether your personal taste runs toward chocolate, vanilla or strawberry.  (Or maybe you will feel the need to eventually mix 10% of this with 3 drops of that and get your own Rocky Road Toffee flavor.)

Good luck,
Rick 

Three cheers for Surface_Line.  I agree completely.

In serious scale modeling it's certainly useful and desireable to know the actual colors that were applied to the full-size object (be it ship, airplane, locomotive, or whatever).  And I certainly respect the people who spend so much time figuring out what those colors were.  But all sorts of factors affect the "accuracy" of color on a model. 

To begin with, paints change color over time and due to weather conditions.  Drive up and down a row of warships tied up to piers at a naval base and you'll see numerous shades of grey - despite the fact that all those ships were allegedly painted the same color originally.  Then there's the question of whether the paint in the can actually matched - precisely - the government's specifications in the first place.  (Nowadays I suspect the matches are extremely close.  I'm not convinced that was always the case.) 

Equally important is the often-discussed "scale effect," which various people have tried (unsuccessfully, to my notion) to quantify.  They've offered lots of theories about why it happens (the effect of the intervening atmosphere on color perception, for instance), but the bottom line is that we simply do not look at 1/350-scale models with 1/350-scale eyeballs. 

Yet another consideration (which I haven't seen discussed often):  the effect of light.  Anybody who's messed around with photography knows that light has a tremendous impact on how the human eye perceives color.  The effect is especially pronounced in the grey range. 

I used to work at a maritime museum, and sometimes had the job of restoring old ship models.  I particularly remember a beautiful, large-scale (1/48, I think) four-stack destroyer.  The paint on its hull had gotten beat up in a few places, and I was assigned the job of touching it up.  I used Poly-S acrylics (reversible, therefore OK for conservation work like this), and spent a great deal of time matching the original shade of grey.  Several other staff members, with fresh eyes, were unable to tell where the original paint stopped and my touchups started.  I was quite happy with the result - until we rolled the model out of the workshop and put it back in its exhibit case in the gallery.  Disaster.  I'd neglected to consider the fact that the workshop was lit with flourescent lights, and the gallery had incandescent bulbs.  My carefully-matched touchup spots now stuck out like sore thumbs; the fresh paint looked several shades darker than the original. 

Most modelers, I imagine, display their models under either incandescent, flourescent, or halogen light.  (Most museum curators will tell you that incandescent looks best, and flourescent worst.)  I don't think you'll ever see a full-size aircraft carrier in any light other than sunlight (which is the worst possible light source to aim at a ship model).  Remove a grey-painted piece of the real ship and take it indoors, under incandescent light.  Your eye may or may not notice, but the truth is that the color will look different.

Start taking pictures of the real ship and the model, and you introduce another batch of problems.  We've all seen comparison shots that demonstrate how much lighting, different kinds of film (in the Olde Dayes), different settings on a digital camera, and post-processing can affect colors (especially greys) in photographs.  Even adjustments to your monitor can make a shade of grey look quite a bit different.  Modern digital cameras, with their adjustable white balance settings, can reduce the problem considerably.  But it's still unusual to find two color photographs of a warship in which the shades of grey look identical.  Give me five minutes with Photoshop Elements and I'll make that aircraft carrier look bright red or bright blue - your choice.  Give a real Photoshop expert (which I'm not) a photo of the real ship and a photo of your model, and he/she can make prints in which the greys match perfectly - regardless of how they look to the eye in real life.

Finally (believe me, this post will come to an end eventually) there's the matter of personal interpretation.  There's room for argument, I guess about whether scale modeling is a science or an art.  I firmly believe it's the latter, and I firmly believe that, even within the constraints of scale fidelity and realism, there's plenty of room for individual taste and opinion.  I don't suggest that a model of an aircraft carrier whose flight deck was green with pink polkadots would be a scale model (though I don't happen to think the person who built such a thing would deserve to be arrested, either).  I do, however, suggest that two individual modelers have every right in the world to their own opinions about just how that grey paint ought to look.

A person can quickly get a headache trying to resolve all these problems logically.  Just what are we trying to do?  Mix a shade of grey that looks the same under incandescent light as the full-size paint looks in sunlight?  Paint the model in such a way that if we take it on board the real ship the greys will seem to match perfectly - when the ship is brand new?  Or when she's been at sea for six months?  Recreate the overall impression that the great ship herself made on us the first time we saw her?  I don't know. 

In my personal opinion, Surface_Line has the right idea.  Find out, as best you can, what the real object looks like.  If possible, get a firm idea in your head of what you want your model to look like.  Then buy a few jars of paint, do some test shots, and see what happens.  Don't hesitate to mix in a little blue, white, black, brown, or whatever if you think it will help.  Then, having established how you think the model ought to look, do your best to make it look that way.  And if somebody else doesn't think it ought to look like that, tell him/her to .

I've been messing around with this hobby for over fifty years; my memories go back to the days when everybody painted models with Testor's glossy paints (which cost ten cents per bottle).  I've watched the development of the hobby - and specifically the development of the hobby paint industry - with somewhat mixed emotions.  On the one hand, the sources of information in print and on the web today have put the hobby into a different, fascinating world than the one it occupied when we had nothing to go by but the instruction sheet.  ("Hull - grey.  Deck - tan.  Bottom - red.  All gun barrels - silver.")  The paints we have at our disposal are infinitely better (and safer) products than those of The Bad Olde Dayes, and the vast range of available colors unquestionably is a boon to the hobby.  On the other hand, if we ever reach the point where the gurus, magazines, and contest judges "order" us to use paints with particular FS numbers, and a modeler who uses something else feels like either a failure or an anarchist, I'll take up knitting instead.  

Sorry to get up on ye olde soapbox for so long.  But this seems to be a topic that gets a lot of attention these days, and I'm genuinely concerned that so many people feel like their models are no good if they don't follow the "rules."  The truth of the matter, as far as I'm concerned, is that there aren't any rules - and I, for one, hope there never will be.

  J.Tilley says "(Nowadays I suspect the matches are extremely close.  I'm not convinced that was always the case.) 

This made me think that this is probably an understatement considering the specs for radar reflective paint and other considerations.  Do you suppose they just go to HD and run a sample through the color computer to get a match? Personally I'm in the" if it looks right it is right department".

Amen to Surface-Line, JTilley, and reklein!  Color is a subjective quality depending on lighting of the work area, the display area, the particular eyesight of the painter, and the eyesight of the viewer.  Additionally, JTilley raises the issue of whether or not the paint in question was actually mixed properly to federal standards, the effects of sunlight, etc.  Not mentioned but equally valid . . . at what period is the modeler depicting his ship and in which fleet?  The colors used by the surface Navy today may differ in shade from those used when Nimitz or Enterprise commissioned.  The shades used by the Atlantic Fleet sometimes differed from those used by the Pacific Fleet, but then, so did the weather conditions in which ships of those fleets operated.

John, you remember as far back as ten cents per bottle?  My earliest memory is fifteen cents, twenty-five for thinner!

Bill Morrison

To begin with, paints change color over time and due to weather conditions.  Drive up and down a row of warships tied up to piers at a naval base and you'll see numerous shades of grey

When my 1/700 scale Randolph, and Lowry are ready for paint, I will paint them as I saw them at 16:13 hours June 14th, 1963, underway in the Virginia Capes Op-area, in the specific sun angle, overcast, spray filled ambient air. If someone wishes to state that the color is wrong, my answer will be; You weren't there on 14 June 1963, at 16:13 hours,underway in the Virginia Capes Op-area. How can you possible know exactly what color everything was?  In the early days of my Navy career, I applied plenty of haze grey, deck grey, dark deck, and nonskid, and boot top. You could clearly see how many different times paint was applied, and it wasn't until the ship got one complete coat, that the patches disappeared. Even running rust, comes in different colors!

Even in my years onboard nuclear submarines, basic flat black did not appear precisely the same from boat to boat sitting at the same pier.  These factors that we are discussing all came into play.

Painting ship models is an art that goes beyond simply identifying the correct shade of gray and spraying the ship with that color.  Shading and applying washes plays a big role in emphasizing details, providing depth, and highlighting prominent features.  You can take the most detailed ship model, apply the correct paint to the appropriate federal standard, and come out of it with a nice toy boat.

John, do you remember the Pyro Table Top Navy line?  Thirty-nine cents for a cruiser, and fifty cents for either a battleship or aircraft carrier.  Their sailing ships could also be bought for fifty cents.  Boy, those were the days!!!! 

Bill Morrison

Oh, yeah!  As a matter of fact we had an interesting discussion of those kits here in the Forum not long ago:  /forums/950315/ShowPost.aspx .

In the unlikely event that a kid of elementary- or middle-school age does get interested in model building nowadays, I wonder where he/she goes to buy kits and supplies.  In the thriving metropolis of Greenville, North Carolina, I know of three stores - Wal-Mart, K-Mart, and Michael's Arts and Crafts - that normally stock any plastic kits whatsoever.  [Edit seven years later: that list needs to be altered a little. We now have an A.C. Moore's Arts and Crafts, which stocks a few shelves of kits. Mostly cars. K-Mart has none. Wal-Mart has, at the most, half a dozen. But Barnes & Noble, of all places, has a handful of Airfix kits. They arrived in the Christmas season; they may well be gone within a few more months.] Each of them has a dozen or so at any given moment.  The nearest hobby shop is about 30 miles away, in Wilson [edit seven years later: there's also a Hobby Lobby in Wilson, right down the street from the hobby shop]; it's an excellent shop for railroaders and pretty good for RC enthusiasts, but not so great for ship modelers or plastic kit enthusiasts.  (To be fair, it was much better in those respects before it got clobbered by Hurricane Floyd, from which it still hasn't completely recovered.) [Edit seven years later: its kit selection has gotten quite a bit better.]  And, of course, there's the matter of money:  $12.00, which used to be the price of the most expensive plastic kits on the market, won't buy much these days.  Oh for the days when a dollar and a walk to the corner drug store would buy an afternoon's worth of model building. 

At the IPMS Nats last week I went on the tour of the USS Whidbey Island at the amphib base.   The ship was just back from operations off of Somalia.    Local paint and hot water (according to the tour guide) combined to give a slight pink tinge to the haze gray.  See the color gradation s on the stern gate.  

The ship returned to Virginia by way of a maritime festival in Maine,  that is the significance of the lobster on the stern-art.

The ship was being primed overall for a thorough yard-period paint job.

John,

I vividly remember that discussion.  There were in fact three English Galleon kits in that series; the Ark Royal, Henry Grace a Dieu, and Revenge.  The Ark Royal was absolutely horrible!

EdGrune . . . those were terrific pictures of the USS Whidbey Island.  I don't think that I would want to try that pink tinge though!

Bill Morrison

My , with my ever-expanding collection of shades of gray - For me, close enough is good enough, unless it is something totally offbeat that I don't have anything close to, such as the 5-L Light Gray going on my current APA Haskell build (that purplish-blue tint looks very, very odd on a warship).

When I was starting my IJN Kimikawa Maru build, I pondered getting some Kure Arsenal Gray to get the exact match, but didn't. Two reasons: 1) Cost, for a shade I would probably never use again, and 2) Model Master Dark Gull Gray looked pretty close to me. After six months of getting the crap knocked outta her all over the North Pacific, I doubt the Kimikawa Maru looked even remotely factory fresh anyway.

MFSOB's observation about the WWII "purple blue" camouflage colors may well have something to do with my earlier point about lighting.  Camouflage schemes, at least from WWII onward, have been designed, by extremely smart people who know what they're doing, to be effective in sunlight (which, after all, is the only kind of light in which a ship, airplane, or military vehicle is normally seen by the enemy).  Take a piece of metal painted that same color inside and point an incandescent or flourescent light at it, and it will look different.

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of going to the IPMS Nationals in Virginia Beach.  All the models were displayed in a huge hall lit by flourescent tubes high up on the ceiling.  (I'm sure the organizers of the event - who, from what I could tell, did a superb job of it - had no control over the lighting.)  It was, of course, an extremely impressive exhibition; some of the models there were among the best I've ever seen.  But I confess I found myself thinking that they would have looked even better under some other kind of light.   

I wish I had read JTilley's post BEFORE I did my USS Arizona!!! I was getting too anal about "color" and "correct shades" and a quick read through his post basically told me "It's ok...Don't obsess over the 15 thousand minute shades of gray/grey that that end up on theses ships!!!"  Cool read!!!