A beginners question: how do you paint search/signal lights?

[Jaggy]

As a kid I used these as my opportunity to go nuts with the shiny silver paint, but as an adult I want to do better. What is appropriate? I'm working in 350 scale, and assume I want these to stand out just a little from my main hull color... Any tips would be appreciated.

[codythecatt]

you paint them the same color as the vertical suface behind or next to them.

otherwise the enemy will use them for target practice. No shiny stuff on the outside.

[Timmy C]

For the lens area itself, you can get away with painting the concave area silver if your searchlight comes with a separate clear plastic lens, such as in Dragon's new kits - the clear lens will reduce the toy-like nature of using silver paint. If it's a single grey plastic piece, however, I would paint the lens black and give it a gloss coat (or just use gloss black).

[hawkeye3d]

There's also a product "Micro Kristal Klear" which is milky in color but dries clear and can be used to make a clear lens. Paint the back of the lens silver and apply some of this and it doesn't look too bad


Bob

[brad]

I haven't tried this with a ship as yet but I would think it should work:

I went to a craft shop and bought a bag of round mirrored sequins for about $2. They are generally used by gluing them to clothing and can range in size from about 1mm to 10mm across.

Anyway, I'm thinking that if I drilled out the solid searchlight casing, glued the sequin in place and then put a dab of clear nail varnish over the top to give it a glass-covered look, it should work.

These sequins have worked well for aircraft landing lights (behind a plastic lens in the wing) and I plan to give it a go the next time I'm building a ship.

What I have done (and it didn't work) was as above but, instead of using the sequin, painted the inside of the light silver before using the nail polish. The paint reacted with the polish.

Another thought might be to use some aluminium (aluminum to you Americans) foil in lieu of the sequin prior to doing the nail polish thing although I haven't tried this one, either.

cheers,

bj

[crawfie69]

I worked on them either fixing or servicing them when I was in the Royal Navy. They were always painted black with a black venetian type shutter behind the glass lens. So I would paint them matt black with a gloss black lens.