Nautical Research Journal 333


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were dry, I airbrushed the actual hull color over the entire surface, until there was just a hint of the pre- shade showing through. (Figure 5) The fi nal step in painting the hull was to mask and paint the boot stripe. (Figures 6 and 7)


While working on the hull, I started making the plastic kit decks look like sun-bleached and holystoned teak. Since my kit was confi gured for 1942, I fi rst had to remove several splinter shields and bulwarks that were absent in 1939. I used an old Grobet sprue cutter to start nibbling them away, but ended up having to scrape them off with a chisel blade X-Acto knife and then sanding everything. (Figure 8) Once these shields were removed, I had to make four elliptical gun mount extensions, which I cut and sanded from


pieces of Evergreen planked sheet styrene. (Figure 9). Next, I glued these pieces to the side of the deck, fi lled in with Tamiya putty, sanded the interfaces, rescribed the plank pattern, and gave the decks a light primer coat of paint. (Figure 10) I then was ready to start painting the individual deck planks. Because I am partial to Tamiya masking tape, I made my own 3-millimeter width tape by cutting three-foot lengths of it in half. (Figure 11) Using these narrow strips, I masked off as many individual planks as I could and airbrushed them with my Badger 200-20 Detail airbrush. (Figure 12) After the fi rst set of planks was painted, the surface looked like Figure 13, a very inauspicious beginning. I then re-masked, in a random fashion, another set of planks, and painted them a slightly different custom color. The fi rst signs


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