Building an 'Improved' Wallace RC 1/16 scale KAIRYU Suicide Submairne Kit, Part-17

A Report to the Cabal:

Today was spent painting up some spare propellers for the subregatta ... things can get rough out there! While testing some of my boats in preparation to this weekends event I found that the THRESHER's propeller was bent badly. So, I figured it a wise move to build up some spares for the field box. Loose or cream a propeller at Carmel and you're out of business unless you have a spare!

The rest of the day was spent gathering my weathering tools and consumables, studying my documentation and laying down the initial weathering on this 1/16th KAIRYU model: Referring mostly to this black and white shot of a prototype, I sat down and started in: first chore was to paint out the 'meatball' flag. To insure that the masking was laid down right I made squares of uniform shape and size as stand-ins for the flags white outline. The stand-ins were applied to the model in the correct positions, used to insure that the four pieces of masking tape (one for each edge of the a square stand-in) went down correctly. The masking applied, the stand-ins were pulled off and saved. They would be used as counter-masks during some of the subsequent weathering operations.

With the flag masking in place, before the white paint went down, I applied little random dabs of rubber cement. Later, after the white and red had been painted on, I would lift paint off of the work with masking tape. This 'chipped' paint effect is most convincing and looks very much like what you would find on a paint job that had been applied to an improperly prepared surface. You see chipped paint all the time in the 'real world.' The rubber cement masking trick is only one way to approach the task; just one masking medium of many. I've used silicon cement, toothpaste, salt (applied over a wetted surface), wet newspaper shards, dish soap, even Vaseline.

I then painted the white background of the flag. I then lifted off some of the paint with a piece of tape, but not all that was masked by the rubber cement, I would finish the paint chip effect only after the red circle went down.

The mask for the round 'meatball' was made by pushing the sharpened edge of a brass tube into a piece of masking tape temporarily secured to a scrap piece of plastic sheet. First, the disc was centered on the white background of the flag, using it as a stand-in. Once happy with location of the meatball I lifted the portion of mask with the hole off the plastic sheet and transferred it to the work, then removing the stand-in.

After painting in the red the masking was removed and I finished lifting off those portions of paint over the rubber cement to complete the chipped paint effect.

Ellie was just here, looking over my shoulder, and commented that it seemed unlikely that the Japanese would let they're national symbol fall into such disrepair. Then I showed here the photos I've been using of a just 'liberated' KAIRYU unit I got from an old Ballantine book -- you can clearly see that the boat was badly rusted and that the flag was subject to this running rust and grim.

Later, I would represent the streaking and splotching on the flag with both water-soluble acrylic and oil based paints during the weathering process.

The next step was to represent, on the hull, sail, and control surfaces the 'streaking' found on any object left to the elements for any length of time. The streaking was done with stiff brushes applying very thinned amounts of dark gray acrylic paint. As the brush strokes go down you have be ever mindful, asking yourself: how would gravity pull on this stuff?

Not wishing to 'dirty' the flag during the streaking operation, I've applied its stand-in mask to protect it.

On the prototype submarine this streaking is the result of grim, dirt, oils, and such being washed by rain water down the surfaces of the structure where the particulate matter eventually lodges, but does so in patterns dictated by the geometry of the object and how gravity makes the water stream flow.

Though this photo of a salvaged Type-A is an extreme study in rusting, it did give me some ideas as to rust location and form as I worked the KAIRYU. This photo, and other examples of rusting I got off the Internet (just do a search for 'oxidation,' and 'rust'), were very instructive. From the colors observed from these and other sources I mixed up acrylic paint to get matches -- a color-wheel is a great tool that will tell you what primary and secondary colors to mix to achieve specific colors.

A cheap plastic palate containing various colors of 'rust' (thinned acrylic paints) was useful as I dipped in stiff brushes and streaked and stippled the quick-drying water-soluble paint onto the model.

Even though the many flood/drain holes in the bottom of my model KAIRYU are bogus, I just could not let them go without bordering them with 'rust' (each hole looking a bit like Bender's puss after an all night drunk).

There is a lot of 'speckle' rust, an orange colored oxidation, all over the surface of the submarine. I prepared a massive quantify of the stuff in a diner plate (hope Ellie does not read this!) which made it easy for me to dip various kind of sponge applicator into it.

The technique of application was to wet the sponge in the paint, wring it out, then mash the sponge into an absorbent cloth to remove more paint, and to only then dab and stipple the sponge onto the surface of the model parts, leaving the desired pattern of specked rust. It's the cellular make-up of the sponge that produces the randomly spaced gobs of 'rust' on the surface of the work.

It's a good practice to test such techniques on an unused model -- get the process down right on the test article before committing the application to work.

God Damn!... Only three days till we leave for the SubRegatta. Shit!