The Ship Model Forum

building the Stennis and Nimitz 1/700 carriers. What colors do I need. New to 1/700 modeling and Aircraft. Mostly armour up to this point. Thanks.

Welcome to the board

If you are planning on using enamels then have a look a WEM's Colourcoats range: http://www.whiteensingmodels.com

Personally, I use Tamiya acrylics but usually end up picking the closest match I can find rather than mixing colours

John

I use a flat light gray mixed with a touch of flat black, this gives the "Haze Gray" look, also for the flight deck you have two colors, you can use a flat gray or a flat black as the flight decks are coated in "nonskid" it only comes in the two colors. I use to serve in the Navy and served on three aircraft carriers, Kitty Hawk, Theo. Roosevelt, and JFK. note that the Nimitz class carriers the island structure is the same color as the hull, and non-nuke carriers the island is black, it is a distinquihment between the two types of carriers.

If you're looking for standard FS colors to do your ships, these are close:

Haze Gray: FS 36270 (26270 for scale effect)
Deck Gray: FS 36008 (26176 for scale effect)

Every few months someone asks this question and without fail those shades are the ones that are posted in reply. WEM's paints will be an exact match, but these are darn close.

-Devin

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We like our history sanitized and theme-parked and self-congratulatory, not bloody and angry and unflattering. - Jonathan Yardley

I like light ghost grey and gunship grey for the deck. I gloss coat the ship to apply declas and after they are dry I dull coat it. Then I use some black chalk and a cotton ball to weather the Flight Deck and it generally comes out prety nice.

Ship Hull+superstructure: Model Master Neutral Gray
Carrier Deck: Colourcoats Modern Deck Gray and Flight Deck Gray.
The deck colors are so variable so they are hard to pick. I have used varous mixes of testors dark grays like Gunship and Euro I as well...

Lo-Viz aircraft: Model Master Dark Ghost Gray on top, Light Ghost Gray on bottom

Hi-Viz aircraft: Model Master Flat Gull gray and white