by John W. » Fri Mar 22, 2019 9:26 am
I favor the technique of using masking tape to lay out the plating's fore / aft strakes, then use Duplicolor High Build Filler Primer. This stuff, available at auto parts stores, puts down a thick but smooth coat that sets up quickly (with the help of a hair dryer). It may take two coats from the rattlecan, but if you sand it gently with very very fine sandpaper, you get a plate strake the thickness of the masking tape - about .005 to .008 thick. It looks convincing for alternately overlapping plates as shown in the model picture.
One personal peave I have is when the strakes are laid out all parallel to each other like a layer cake. Bad dog. Two recent kits (not the only ones I'm sure) that illustrate this are the Merit YORKTOWN and Very Fire MISSOURI. The CAD guys that cut the molds apparently have never looked at a real ship for the plating. These are both really good and accurate models except for this visible plating inaccuracy. The point is: the ship is wider at midships than at either the bow or stern. There are more plates / strakes at midships than at the bow or stern. Depending upon how "fat" the ship is in the middle, there can be almost twice the number of strakes there as at either end. So the strakes narrow and blend together as you move forward or aft from midships. Importantly, just like wooden hulled sailing ships, the strakes never end in a point - it is always a blunt end. Paul Budzik from time to time posts a picture of the YORKTOWN class hull plating diagram that shows the overall effect well. You can find Paul's plating picture and a discussion of the paint-on strakes method in both the CASF ENTERPRISE CV-6 and HORNET CV-8 (edit: CV-8 thread p. 35) threads as well as some pictures of my HORNET under construction using the method.
I favor the technique of using masking tape to lay out the plating's fore / aft strakes, then use Duplicolor High Build Filler Primer. This stuff, available at auto parts stores, puts down a thick but smooth coat that sets up quickly (with the help of a hair dryer). It may take two coats from the rattlecan, but if you sand it gently with very very fine sandpaper, you get a plate strake the thickness of the masking tape - about .005 to .008 thick. It looks convincing for alternately overlapping plates as shown in the model picture.
One personal peave I have is when the strakes are laid out all parallel to each other like a layer cake. Bad dog. Two recent kits (not the only ones I'm sure) that illustrate this are the Merit YORKTOWN and Very Fire MISSOURI. The CAD guys that cut the molds apparently have never looked at a real ship for the plating. These are both really good and accurate models except for this visible plating inaccuracy. The point is: the ship is wider at midships than at either the bow or stern. There are more plates / strakes at midships than at the bow or stern. Depending upon how "fat" the ship is in the middle, there can be almost twice the number of strakes there as at either end. So the strakes narrow and blend together as you move forward or aft from midships. Importantly, just like wooden hulled sailing ships, the strakes never end in a point - it is always a blunt end. Paul Budzik from time to time posts a picture of the YORKTOWN class hull plating diagram that shows the overall effect well. You can find Paul's plating picture and a discussion of the paint-on strakes method in both the CASF ENTERPRISE CV-6 and HORNET CV-8 (edit: CV-8 thread p. 35) threads as well as some pictures of my HORNET under construction using the method.