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Ship's hull calking.


Hyperion74

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Here's one for you lads. Is a wooden ship's hull calked and then painted over. The reason for this quire is that I an not sure weather or not to run a thinned black paint in to the seams of the molded hull planks on a model of Bonhomme Richard that I am working on. The hull to the waterline is white.  The ship is 1:132 scale so there is room for detail. Any input would be helpful. Hopefully some of you out there who have seen real wooden ships or have an intimate knowledge of them will reply. Opinions are welcome as long as day-glo or paisley are not mentioned. For some of you more aged fellows, tie dye sails are out of the question.

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Yes the seams of the hull are caulked, both deck and hull. I found a great little youtube clip for you if forums allow them. Generally cotton for smaller seems up to oakum for larger seams and vessels.

 

 

(I have no affiliation to the boatyard or creators of the clip)

 

Hope this helps

 

Crankey

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USS Constitution's deck.  Hope this helps.  :)

 

Generally, the decks weren't painted, as the sailors kept them clean and nice by holystoning them, so you'd expect to see a deck that looks like the one below.

 

The hulls were indeed painted over, and I doubt they taped off the seams to prevent them from getting paint, so I think it would be safe if you were portraying a painted hull to do so with slight "seams" in a teensy bit darker color (to keep the light effect of the planking") than you're painting the hull.

 

US_Navy_110722-N-SH953-539_USS_Constitut

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Wow, thank you guys, you are awesome. I did the main deck in a color as close to bare oak as I could find. Then I dry brushed it with a light brown to pick up the molded wood grain. I will leave the white lower hull alone then, or maybe run in a thinned light grey. I have the big model of Constie to work on too but not for a while. What I really need is a lot more time. There's work and T.V. and computer gaming and my G&L guitar and the wife and a fella needs to sleep once in a while. My lord, life is sooooo rough!

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