Hi all I am almost at the point where my IJN Akagi can be painted. I need help with the deck. What is the best way to do the white markings? Paint or decal? If I paint them what is the best tape to use to mask them with? Also is there a sequence you think I should follow to paint the deck?
well I repainted the deck of my unfinished Junyo also 1/700 scale and from Tamiya and I hand painted my white marker lines all it takes is patience and a really pointy brush. And when I get a chance I’ll post some pics of my Aoshima Soryu which should be the sister of the Akagi. BTW the Soryu isn’t built yet all I did was the flight deck by painting it light grey and painting the stripes.
when i built my akagi, i first airbrushed the flight deck in dark tan and let that dry. i then oversprayed with a glosscoat and let that dry. the white line markers on the akagi deck stand fairly proud so you have two options. you can mask the whole deck leaving the lines showing. i’d use tamiya masking tape and then airbrush the lines in white. if you have a steady hand, you can mask then paint with a small pointed brush. just a small point fron the previous response, the akagis sistership was the kaga and not the soryu. soryus sistership was the hiryu. all four of these carriers were lost at midway.
Hi,
Akagi and Kaga weren’t sister ships. The first one was converted from battle cruiser and the second one was converted from battleship. They had island’s on the opposite sides (kaga SB, and akagi port side), they served together in 1 division thats why many people say that they were sisters ships. They were totally differen’t. And its really hard to say that Soryu and hiryu were sisters. Hiryu was improved soryu class (the difference was again the side on which island was located (soryu SB, and hiryu PS) Hiryu had also displacement larger by 2000 t. They served together in 2 division. The PS island was designed to improve the air traffic and landing when the both sips PS and SB island’s ships worked together…
I vote for decals for the striping, much less labor intensive, especially in that scale. Paint the flight deck your color of choice, lay down a clear gloss coat or Future, decal and then a coat of flat clear to smooth everything out. Worked great on my USS Enterprise, CVN-65, and that old gal has a lot of stripes.