GHQ Models Forums

WHat do some of you guys out there use for painting decking on WW2 ships. I know that is a pretty broad question. I'm talking about the light tan linoleum or the wood decking? I've tried a few and some are better than others but none are ideal.

Matthew

Model Master used to make naval colors. Not sure if they still do. The colors are very nice.

I use the Model Master Wood color for unpainted decks. While it is probably too dark for decks that have been holystoned it looks good and not washed out on a model this size.
For the British and Japanese linoleum decking I use the Model Master Military Brown. For corticene and other finishes I buy or mix paints to match the color chips in some of my books. For US Navy Deck Blue, I use a 50 / 50 mixture of Model Master Non Specular Sea Blue and Intermediate Blue.

For the light tan decking or other non standard colors, I would recommend investing in sets of color chips for the navies you are modeling or books with color plates or color chip representations that you can compare to your paint brand of choice.

I hope this helps.

Battlewagon, MM does make a deck blue. It's called Deck Blue 20B. Has a code of 4243 and a UPC of 0-75611-04243-5

If you use enamel paints, try WEM paints. WEM (I think it's White Ensign Models) is in the U.K., but "Snyder & Short (Sacramento area in Calif.) handles them. WEM's line of naval paints includes U.K. Corticene and late war Semtex (S&S has a recommendation for prewar/early war deck color), U.S. deck blue, Japanese Linoleum, and dark greys for itgalian & German navies. Nothing for French ships (I understand the French used a red or red-brown linoleum of some kind).

I mix my own color for decks and naval greys using poly paints, but then I do all my ships along the same lines so identification is difficult for the opposing player.

I just started doing the more historical colors for decks Best of luck

Thanks guys, it's nice to hear what other folks are using so I can experiment a bit. On another tangent, anyone know what to use for the Soviet Modern era decks? It appears to be some sort of reddish ochre type pigment, but I can't find a paint to match. Of course some of that may be due to weathering.

suisse6 wrote:Thanks guys, it's nice to hear what other folks are using so I can experiment a bit. On another tangent, anyone know what to use for the Soviet Modern era decks? It appears to be some sort of reddish ochre type pigment, but I can't find a paint to match. Of course some of that may be due to weathering.

Soviet deck colors are difficult. Here are colors from a Russian modeler board supposedly taken from actual paint chips. Who knows?


This is another sample from the same board


This was posted on an open modeling board for the use of fellow modelers. I think we qualify.

To give you some prospective this is a quote from the Soviet visit to San Diego in 1989

Soviet deck red/brown is not an exact color. In 1989, two Soviet warships visited San Diego, a Sovremmenny (Sov) and a Udaloy. They were in distinctly different shades of paint. The Sov was much darker grey and had browner decks. The Udaloy was a lighter grey, with a buff tint to it. Udaloy's decks were redder. And this was not a feature of a fresher coat of paint on one than the other - they had both been painted VERY recently. Maybe the colors reflected their different ship classes, different parent squadrons or different fleet ownership (both in the Pacific?), but the fact remains that two ships tied up in San Diego didn't match.

Ships weather. Soviet quality control was not all it should have been. Soviet quantity wasn't all it should have been. During the occupation of Czechoslovakia, in 1968, Soviet tanks were supposed to be marked with a large white cross fore and aft and side to side across the turret. Some divisions did not receive any white paint or received insufficient quantities to mark their vehicles.

I imagine the same thing happened during the San Diego visit. Or perhaps it's like the Japanese in WW2, different shipyards/plants produce different grays to the same order.