14 APRIL 2015 http://www.marinemodelmagazine.com
this must seem a bit pedantic,
but it’s all hard won experience
talking. Firstly you do need a
very sharp pencil, but you don’t
want a hard (i.e. 2H) one, a
softer one is better (1B or 2B
work for me). Depending on the
hull material, a hard pencil won’t
mark it easily so the tendency
is to press harder and that
could indent or scratch the hull.
Conversely, you don’t want too
heavy a line, the thinnest you
can still see and work with is the
ideal. Pencil can be surprisingly
difficult to remove and I have
seen models with pencil
markings still visible through the paint in places.
Now I know we are not at the painting stage proper yet. But
my advice would be to spray a light grey matt undercoat before
drawing the waterline. Don’t just draw the line, mask off and paint
the colours. For a start it can be difficult to leave a mark on a shiny
surface such as GRP or ABS and really, it is best to undercoat
first. Don’t forget to degrease and clean the hull and then rub downL
ast month I mentioned that I would be talking about marking
and painting waterlines on scale boats. I also said that I would
show you how to make a device to help you achieve straight
waterlines. Now I am going to do all those things, but I have to
confess that due to life getting in the way of modelling and writing
time, I haven’t been able to make one of these devices (simple as
it is) to show you. But I have drawn a diagram and have included a
few photos, received over the years, of different devices that other
modellers use. Before explaining how to do the deed, I’d like to write
a little about waterlines, what they are and their variations etc.WATERLINES AND BOOT TOPPINGS
So what is the waterline? It is sometimes defined as the line on
the immersed hull of a ship to which the surface of the water rises.
Also as any of several lines parallel to this line, marked on the hull
of a ship, and indicating the depth to which the ship sinks under
various loads and water types, i.e. fresh or salt.Now I’m not going to go into all the variations of markings that
may indicate differing waterlines. Some of which will even indicate
load states for different cargoes and whether the ship is in salt or
fresh water. For example there are specific load lines for different
cargoes, especially wood. If you need to know, check out ‘Load
Lines’, or ‘Plimsoll Line’ on the Internet.
The waterline we are concerned with here is the one that refers to
the line on a ship’s hull that is parallel to the water’s surface when
the ship is afloat in a normal position. In actual fact, all waterlines
are one of the ‘ship’s lines’ used to denote the shape of a hull in a
ship’s plans.
Next we come to the boot topping. This is simply a stripe of
different coloured paint running around the hull at the waterline and
divides the lower hull colour from the upper hull colour. See the
photo of the Grimmershorn to see what I mean. It would be rare
to see this on a large ship, except perhaps a liner, but you will see
boot toppings on many small craft especially yachts. On a model
this may be painted, or on a smaller model, be simply represented
by the use of self-adhesive vinyl auto pin-striping tape.TOOLS OF THE TRADE
First off you will need something to draw the line on the hull.
The obvious thing is to use a pencil. That is generally what I would
recommend, but there are a few things to think about. I know allIAN LOOKS AT HOW TO DRAW
STRAIGHT WATERLINES ON
YOUR HULLIAN LOOKS AT HOW TO DRAW
SCALE S C E N E
AUTHOR: IAN WILLIAMS GREAT BRITAIN
[email protected]Krick Grimmershorn showing an
example of boot toppingDevice for holding
pencil made from
wood block (see text)The cheap way of doing it using a styrene cupA commercial device. With a
bit of thought this could be
homemade from plyp14_MMAPR15_ScaleScene.indd 14 9/3/15 09:29: