It was taught to me by my landlady, ( she does stained glass as a hobby ). Take a piece of black artists chalk and shave it over a basin of Warm water big enough to put your ship in . Now measure the drawings of the ship from deck to boot stripe top.
Now mark the ship at the same spot with a " Sharpie" fine point , once aft , once forward , both sides! . Now set the ship in this water and the black chalk will stick to the hull showing you where to paint your line .
Why the warm Water ? well , she says the warm water seems to soften the charcoal or chalk or something , making it stickier and easier to do this way .She uses it to dip large sheets of glass so both sides have a cut line !
Hey , guess what ? It has worked flawlessly for five ships now , for both the bottom then the top , of the boot stripe or just plain waterline . Kudos to Crossover ideas ! Aha , By the master of Tanks built to float and carry things , Why , of course , it’s the - - - - Tanker - Builder
I don’t know why you say that . If you have a model and subject it to the same treatment with Talcum Powder on the water , it’s essentially the same thing . Plus , with black chalk dust it’s easier to see !
The powder is drawn by static electricity to the line between water’s surface tension and it’s own properties letting the powder stick temporarily !
OK maybe Im missingt something here. So you put the model in water with the black chalk take out of the water and I can see how that would mark the waterline. So now you have a wet model with black chalk on it what do you do next? I have marked waterlines for along time and never had to put the model in water. I dont get it.
Oh I’ve heard of this one. But it doesn’t really work unless the sides are more or less vertical, like a modern oil tanker I guess. Under the stern counter you’ll only be approximate, at best.
The craziest version of this problem I ever encountered: the Russian ship Borodino. She had draft markings in Cyrillic, and they ran under the stern not only correctly spaced vertically, in other words farther apart on the surface from each other, but the number got taller too so it looked "right from a horizontal viewing. In a small boat I guess. Tried everything I could think of, but gave up.
Tanks I think you posted this about three days too early.
Oh my my friend .You gently set it aside and let it air dry .Then take a pencil and put dashes along the line .Wash the chalk off and you’ve marked the waterline for taping . With a set of pencil marks to guide you .
While I only had to mark a waterline once, some time ago, I found a method that works and gets you a nice pencilled line without water - it works like follows:
You put your ship on an even surface, like a table top. You jack the ship so that it sits even, with the waterline parallel to the table top. then you take a block of a hard material and lay a pencil on top of that block, so that the tip of the pencil is exactly on the height of the waterline. Then you trace around the hull by moving the block along with the pencil - and it can be done in about 10 minutes - the jacking up of the hull included.
Hope it helps - good luck with your projects and have a nice day
I’ve read about that “wet” method of waterline marking several times. I’ve never tried it, but I see some problems with it. To begin with, the water and the model have to be sitting absolutely still.
I’ve got a cheap little gadget called an Accu-scribe, which I bought at Woodcraft. It simply holds a pencil at whatever height and angle you set. To each his/her own, but I can’t see an advantage to the wet method over the Accu-scribe.
There is a piece of wisdom in there. When marking a waterline (I use the “dry” method) a series of dashes beats a line. Then let the tape take a somewhat natural curve.
I was just passing on something I was told about .I use a home-made hull scriber most of the time .This chalk or powder method is how I did it years ago and forgot all about .
I have a special jig than holds the ship level on all planes and then I lock it in place , scribe and paint away . It’s a jig I made from LEGO components . T.B.
