Deck Houses and Machinery

One of the great things about this kit is the detail which is molded into each part. In order to preserve this detail and make it stand out , I use the painting techniques of wash and dry brushing.After removing the deckhouse parts from the spru trees and cleaning them up, I placed them on a piece of cardboard which I covered with double backed carpet tape. The parts were spray painted with Testors Flat Light Earth. This is a good medium brown color. After the paint was dry, I mixed a wash of dark brown water color thinned with a couple of drops of dish washing liquid. This was liberaly applied to all the parts on the board.

When the wash dried, it had settled into all the low spots and around the raised details, highlighting them. The light earth color was mixed with a little white to lighten it and dry brushed on.

This highlights the highest raised areas, the effect is to prevent the details from becoming lost in the monotonous brown color. To give the brass portholes in the rear cabin a more authentic look, they were painted a light green color and then testors gold was dry brushed over the green.

The winches, pumps and other deck machinery, which are normally black, were painted dark gray and highlighted with a black wash and light gray dry brushing. The hatches and deckhouse roofs were painted flat gull gray, to look like weathered teak. I used a dark gray Prismacolor pencil to bring up the molded wood grain on the roofs. A wash of black watercolor was used to outline the hatch covers.

Two 4”lengths of anchor chain were cut and blackened. I used super glue to attach them to the chain gates on the rear end and a drop of super glue on the front end to attach it to the deck. Even though the glue frosted over it will not be visible under the foc’sl deck.