The Ship Model Forum

Hello,

I have a question regarding how to replicate the hull rippling seen on modern ships. I have seen the work ARH and other do to plate the hulls to replicate the steel shell plates but how would or should one go about the modern look of the welded hulls. I am building my 1/72 HMCS Assiniboine and this effect is rather prominant when looking at photoes especially as the ships got older. I am also thinking that for scale effect, this might not be possible.

I was going to pull one clean hull from the mould(when it is done) and use this as the new master plug to try the effect on. I am thinking of using very fine wire to create the boxes on the hull and then use filler to create the effect in selected areas. This does seem to be a very time consuming process and I am not fully convinced that it would be worth it in scale if you know what I mean.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be most welcome. I will try to get better pictures to show what I mean. When I shrink these to upload, they get too small to see the detail clearly.

One modeler did this on his Revell 1/144 Fletcher hull - perhaps it may help you:
viewtopic.php?f=59&t=40032

Thanks for the info. That is what I needed.

Yes the rippling can look pretty pronounced on the actual ship but if overdone on the model it will look all wrong if you will pardon me so saying.

Bearing in mind that on the ship the plates have deflected inwards between the frames/background support structure. If you build the model with that structure replicated - quite easy to do, although a bit tedious, by fixing appropriately sized strips to the hull (after first of all reducing its length/width, etc to compensate for the thickness of the strips). Then to that add the plates to the correct scale size. Thin aluminium sheet (printers litho) is absolutely first rate for this. Best to put the ripple effect into each plate before fixing it in place. It's a slow process but achieves the effect you'll want at 1:72 scale.

As an added touch, using very, very fine wire run along each plate joint, you can replicate the raised bead of the welds.

All a labour of love, and good luck.

Mike Reading