The Ship Model Forum

Many of you are interested in knowing my way of doing water. I learned all the tricks of making water right from this site---the excellent article "Modeling Realistic Water" by Jeff Herne. After several projects I had developed a few extra procedures of my own. Besides the basic construction of sea base made of gel, I emphasis on building wake patterns made by real ship. Pay a little bit attention on painting the wakes. It will reward you handsomely on the finished product.

Here's the step-by-step process of making a water base for a 1/700 Pitroad IJN Destroyer Hatsushimo. Materials required for the sea base are
- Base. In this case it's the base plate of an IMEX 10" railroad display case.
- Acrylic gel medium. I used Liquitex brand bought at Michaels.
- Cheap acrylic paints. I used Liquitex's Blue Green color.
- Tamiya epoxy putty for making bow waves.

First is to find a picture of the ship underway. I want to model a ship making a high speed run. After consulting several of my references I settled on the picture below from a Japanese book.



In the picture below use the picture above as reference and sculpt bow waves with Tamiya epoxy putty.



Before gluing the ship to the base, inspect the wave and make adjustments.



In the picture below, use white color to outline the white wakes generated by the ship. The ship has been glued to the base using super glue.



Apply gel to the base with a paint brush. I applied gels in very dense strokes.



After the first application is dry and set, apply gel along the white wake outlines prepared in one of the previous steps. You can make foams generated by wakes with gel in the step too. Another important thing is to cover up brush strokes with new gels. Brush strokes don't look nice at all on a sea base.



Paint the sea base with base color here.



Now the tricky part that will make or break the water base--painting the wakes. At least try to stick to the photo as much as possible. Paint the wakes with white color.



Painting of the base is basically done. Now you can concentrate your efforts on finishing the ship. After the final dull coat is applied to the model, give the water base a heavy dose of Future.



The finished product!

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Thank you very much for sharing.

Yevgeniy

Thank you for sharing your tricks. Yours is a really nice model in its element; that's the way I prefer to display my models too.
I started basically following the same article that you've mentioned, and my steps closely match the ones you described here. At some time in my ship modeling incursion I decided to try some different materials. That's when I experimented with polar silicones (caulking) with results that are equal to those obtained when using Liquitex acrylic gel. The main difference is that the former is much cheaper. It dries to complete transparency while releasing ammonia, so you'll prefer to apply it in a well ventilated area.

Jorge

Terrific tutorial, Hanchang. It's great to see it done step by step!

This one should be stickied with Jim's!

Bob

WOW !!!
Thanks Hangchang,really cool technique,your water effect is truly a masterpiece

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Simply outstanding work Hanchang!

What is your technique for making the sandbags/ropes on your destroyer? I love how realistic it looks.


Bob Pink.

I borrowed a page from Jeff Lin for techniques on making sand bags and mattresses. What I did with this particular model were,

- First prepare a small piece of mixed Tamiya epoxy putty.
- Retrieve a tiny piece from the mix and put it on a hard surface under a steel ruler.
- Put your fingers on the ruler and start moving it back and forth. Do not put too much pressure on the ruler. After a few back-and-forths the blob under the ruler should become a thin rod. Repeat this until you see the thickness you like.
- Cut pieces from the rod using hobby knife for anti-splinter mattresses. Cut smaller pieces and flatten them to form sand bags. Make sure you do this while the putty is not set yet. You can adjust shapes and edges of mattresses and sand bags in this stage.

Ropes and exposed voice pipes were made from artist's copper wires.

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Thank you for the info. I'll have to give it a shot.


Bob Pink.

Hanchang

Your builds are absolutley great and I have been trying partially replicate, your water, i just recently found a putty type mixture that might work, for bow wave and wake. But my real questions are in Photo 1 and 2 how do you get the curveature of the bow wake, I try and it either falls over or it mashes down? Secondly, what do you use to feather the base of the bowake in to the base it self, I have tried a tooth pick a fork and it just doesn't look right?? and lastly how to you paint the wake pattern of the sides of the ship I tried like you say with white but It comes out all white or not enough, there is no blend with the blue -green in places like yours. I know these sound like dumb ?'s but the white of mine is like too white. anyway once again thanks for the insipration.

Thunder

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