i have built a 1/48 hellcat and painted it in dark sea blue which is a gloss. should i dullcoat it to show weathering or leave it in the full gloss?. i have looked at reference pic’s but cant work out if they were as glossy or dullish.
Ant,
I would recommend dulling it. When the aircraft first came out of the factory it’s finish was semi-gloss but the sun soon faded the paint so a dull apperance would be appropiate. The longer the aircraft was in service the duller the finish would appear. If you are doing a new aircraft then I would just dull around the exhuast area and the area the pilot used to bard the aircraft, i.e. high usage area.
Reddog
Depends on you, really. It also depends if you’re building a navy fighter or a marine fighter. Navy fighters could be taken below decks and kept out of the elements. Most marine fighters spent their days sitting on the dirt runways exposed to the sun, rain and whatever else mother nature could throw at them.
If you’re going navy and you want to represent it as a new service 'cat, go with a high-gloss finish. If you want to make it look like it’s seen some service, weather the paint a bit and go with a satin finish. These rarely got to the point where they were sporting a dull coat.
If you’re going marine, you can go all out and beat it up a bit (within reason, they weren’t flying rust buckets) and finish it off with a dull coat.
Here are some pics of my 1/32 ‘cat. Since this bird belonged to the AGC, it was kept in fairly good condition (that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it, lol).
-Fred
Actually, most USN carrier aircraft spend most of their time up on the “roof” in the elements, usually getting taken below only when major maintenance is required (engine changes, damage repair, phase inspections etc). And in the long run, a salt sea atmosphere is as damaging (if not more so) to paint as the dusty air in the desert. Paint dulls, wears and fades very rapidly.
If you check the WW II ANA color chart, you’ll find there were three Sea Blues used by the Navy, Gloss Sea Blue, Semi-Gloss Sea Blue and Non Specular Sea Blue (flat). Late war carrier aircraft were delivered from the factory in the overall Gloss Sea Blue (although a lot of them had a Non specular Sea Blue anti-glare panel on the nose - seems to have been more common on F4Us of the period).
I assumed the OP was building a late war due to the first sentence where he stated it was a dark sea blue gloss. Since all late war birds were dark sea blue gloss, that was a natural assumption.
And following that logic, a late war bird wouldn’t have had time to get that faded as the last deliveries were in the last year of the war, so most probably didn’t see more than 8 or 10 months of service.
Now as for the marine birds, I was thinking of the ones used on island bases. They’re exposed to the sun and sea air as much as navy birds, so they’d have as much fading on them, but probably more sea air damage (i.e. salt corrosion) as the navy is pretty good about hosing down the birds.
Anyway, I find the best way to paint a model is to find as many pictures of the one you want to represent and follow the weathering. Most decal sets represent fairly famous planes, so there are probably a fair amount of pictures out there.
-Fred