I remember someone putting out a youtube about making stencils for ship camo. Does anybody here ever used that method or has advice on how to mask camo by hand? I was thinking about tracing out the design with markers and hand painting. Am I foolish or just ill informed?
Maybe trace the basic camo outline with a pencil and then mask with regular masking tape? Thatâs what I do on my Luftwaffe aircraft.
I fully mask the hull and airbrush that then paint the superstructure by hand. Trying to mask all the protrusions and indents involved in the upper works is way beyond my paygrade.
Well, itâs complicated.
USN ships, as a forinstance, painted the decks differently than the sides & hull, This despite any dazzle or splotch camo used. (Although some Measures did have intruding splotches, but you need to be really tight with your reference photos.)
RN camo followed its own rules, but also had standards for deck materials, as they had both a linoleum decking, and a masonite non-skid that were not painted.
Also, ships have lots of âcrinkly bitsâ that tend to be impolite to masking materials.
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What Mac said!
Gator Masks used to make some (mostly 700 scale) masks for ships. I found that they worked âsort ofâ well on hullâs flat surfaces but really were largely ineffective for superstructures with all the âcrinkley bitsâ (I like that term)⌠They also didnât handle deck camouflage well. You applied the whole mask to say a 5H based hull, then pulled off the 5O segments and sprayed. Once dry you reapplied these segments â taking time to align them properly, Then pull the black segments and paint. A lot of time, a lot of effort.
I have attempted a similar approach using Xerox paper masks applied iteratively. They are glued on using a water-soluble glue stick. The masks wash off when done.
Still have to hand paint deck and superstructure camo but my process of masking/demasking/painting/remasking seems to be a bit more efficient