Seems that armor and aircraft are almost always weathered for "realism"
Yet ship kits I see in various kit galleries almost always have a look of being right out of drydock.
Is there a reason why ships are usually not weathered?
too hard to get a decent scale effect???
Craig
well, it kind of figures. you have to be really anal to do all that rigging, rails, all them fiddly bits. so a clean ship would be a happy ship! (just kidding, guys, honest! put down those wood club thingies! at least count to 10...while i run.)
I weather nearly all my ships. However there are two schools of thought in the ship modeling community. One group feels that ships mounted on pedistals are representation of the real thing in a display setting (a model). Others feel that ships should be made as real life as possible and that includes weathering (rust, chips, dirt, salt, etc. See my photo below. It's a 1/192 scale model of the CSS Chicora. The Confederates were VERY short on maintanance facilities for thier shiops so they weathered heavily because of this. That's why I weathered the Chicora as I did.
Another reason you don't see a loty fo weathering on ships is due to scale. At 1/700 for instance weathering wouldn't show up, whiole at
1/350 it would need be subtile and not over done. At least that's the way I see it.
Just lovely work, Rusty. I wish I could have spent a little more time on weathering on my 1/600 casemate ironclads.
They don't say "ship shape" for nuthin'...
"Rusty White" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@v33g2000cwv.googlegroups.com:
Nicely done!
But yeah, doing it *well* is very difficult. Subtle washes and getting
*just* the right tones is very difficult and time-consuimg. There's also the school of thought that a model is an idealized representation, adn so does not need weathering.For me, I don't weather models because of the extra time involved, and shaky hands.
cd
You're right Rufus, but ships during WW-2 weathered VERY quickly between yard visits. Bullets and shrapnel caused many dents and chips and couldn't all be repaired between actions. I have many photos showing really heavy rust and dirt on the hull where maintainance isn't possible at sea with people shooting at you. Modern navy ships weather much less due to frequent yard visits and materials that don't rust as much if at all and better paint.
Rusty White Flagship Models Inc.
your ship looks "right", so you seem to have it. is that one of those pricey resins? i'd love to build one but they are out of my budget. any card models of civil war stuff?
Yeah, I'll buy that for a ship fighting on the line...but then there's the "Hollywood factor" for display models - "ship shape" probably translates to "non-weathered" in gallery mode for a display model.
...grinding my teeth over just how much weathering to do on my current U-boat project. So far I think I did just enough on the upper pressure hull...don't really want to go overboard on the finished model, but I don't want it to be pristine either.
-snips-
A whole bunch.
wicked coolness. thanks!
Wow, pretty cool, thanx :)
I've been too busy working on a 1:1 scale
1994 Ford Crown Vic. But it has now sucked up a Blaupunkt, Boston Acoustics, and Alpine stereo system. I now need to get some alloy wheels to put my 16" Michelin's on :) One owner car, that is in incredible state of preservation, almost like a new old car.Kinda like a BIG model in a way....
Depends on what you call "pricey". The model is the 1/192 CSS Chicora/ Savanna from Flagship Models
Rusty White Flagship Models Inc. flagshipmodels.com
I don' t know much about U-boats, but from what I have seen built by other modelers, they were real rustbuckets. By that I mean they were really weathered (by the modelers) due to long voyages and lack of maintainance at the end of the war. So I gues your interpretation is as good as anyone's.
Rusty White Flagship Models Inc.
Yeah, and I have a number of opinions on that...
Firstly, that most of the models I've seen are severely over-weathered. From a strictly engineering standpoint, rust lines set up pathways for stuctural failure and would therefore both reduce the operational depth of the boat and make it more vulnerable to depth charge attack; so I would think that fighting rust would be a stringent maintenance task for any submarine.
Secondly, most pictures of U-boats I've seen on the net don't show them nearly as weathered as modelers are currently depicting them. The average U-boat patrol lasted 14 days at sea and I also doubt that they would get that beaten and rusted in just 14 days. 14 days on a pig-boat may seem "long", but it's still only 14 days...
Thirdly, U-boats were freshly painted and refit in the pens between patrols; so in theory they were corrosion controlled/maintained every 14 days.
Fourthly, they were destroyed at a fairly good clip after the "happy time" of freely attacking Allied convoys ended. Not many actually survived to the war's end. So I theorize that the ones that didn't make it home to get refit were sunk before they corroded as much as modelers are weathering them.
So...I'm thinking that evidence points to them being maintained in no worse shape than any surface vessel, or at the very most only slightly more than the average surface vessels (which also spent longer periods at sea). That's my opinion as supported by the research I've done.
for me $70 kits are pricey. not overpriced, just too much for my modeling budget.
Ships on standard brass pedestal displays look really stupid if weathered heavily. Either on keel blocks with a grungy/slimy drydock base or at sea on a "water" base and weathering them makes sense.
The relatively "unweathered" style is referred to as Admiralty or dockyard style and the only "weathering" that is appropriate is a subtle dark wash and *maybe* a very subtle drybrushing to make detail pop. It's not really weathering since it is simply an artistic technique to enhance the detail, not to show the effects of weather per se.
Now if we could just get some of the aicraft guys that produce the plastic equivalent of Tammy Faye Baker/drag queens > Seems that armor and aircraft are almost always weathered for
I also weather many of my ships- most in fact. The degree depends on the ship. Warships in times of war can get really grungy. For commercial ships it depends on the type of ship. I did a baltic sea coastal tanker awhile ago and weathered it heavily. On the other hand, many of my ore boats were prides of the fleet when they were young, and would have been well taken care of, so the weathering was minimal. I almost always, however, streak some crud down from the hawse hole, the place where the anchor chain comes through.
Yahbut, how much of the pressure hull is visible on a U boat? Isn't most of the exterior, ballast tanks and fairings? Point well made and taken about corrosion causing stress concentrations/points of failure, but I would figure those smart German engineers used steels that corroded relatively evenly vs "crevice/pinhole" mode. Did they use zinc or other sacrifical protection back then?
Well who took these pics? German Navy? Would they take pics of the really grungy looking ones?
I know the Germans have a very proud reputation/tradtion for doing things "properly" but surely toward the end of the war, corners got cut. You've obviously done more research on U boats than I - just playing devils advocate.
The upper portion of the pressure hull is completely exposed beneath the deck, and between the flood holes on either side casement. About 1/3 of the forward and aft sections of the hull beneath the saddle tanks are also areas where the pressure hull is directly exposed to the sea.
You have to look at pictures of U-boats returning to port from patrol. If you compare return to port photos to embark photos, there isn't much severe wear in comparison. Again, 14 days at sea is not a long time. Most of the photos I've been able to find are both form Kriegsmarine and private sources. These photos just plain don't show the boats the states modelers are finishing them.
That's a myth - similar to the one about them running out of steel for U-boat decking. The wooden decking was less prone to icing at sea, and that's why the decks were wooden. And my argument about attrition rates holds up particularly well towards the end of the war.
The boats weren't refit as a matter of pride - they were refit as a matter of survival.
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