I will keep this short . Has anyone, seen some finely built model patrol boats and marveled at the weathering ? Now the reason I ask . I have spent the better part of my life in, on, and around ships and boats .
Some of them were wood . Does a wood boat rust ? Nope .Does the hardware on the boat that are steel or iron rust? Heck yes . Now if you don’t maintain it ,it will soon have streaks going over the sides too.
In " Rusting " or “Weathering” ship and boat models folks always seem to get carried away sometimes . A warship , out on patrol or voyaging from say , the States to The Area around The Mediterranian or the Straights of Hormuz Will be rusty and weathered looking .Some moreso than others .You can tell too .
An Aluminum ship will have rust streaks from the steel fixtures and bulkheads streaking it .But not as bad as an all steel ship . An all steel ship will have rust everywhere .Steel and Iron rust very fast in a salty environment .
Wooden vessels will have rust showing around through hull fittings and maybe running faintly over the side from Stanchion bases if they are steel . This is common .But many are maintained so well you won’t see it .
Patrol Boats and the LCVPs and such could get a lot of rust that way. Now , remember before you weather your model, Make sure what it’s made out of .If wood , the Hull does not rust ! T.B.
You mention LCVPs as an example. If we extend that to the type of ship that carried LCVPs be it an APA, AKA, APD, or LST and if that ship was on its way to the MED, the deck and boat division personnel had a lot of time on their hands. What better way to use it than to paint. So those boats that were accessible would have a fresh coat of paint. Likewise the portions of the mother ship that were accessible without going over the side would get a fresh coat of paint. That would leave the main ship hull and maybe the outboard side of boats hung over the side to need of freshening up upon arrival.
There’s an old Navy saying “If it moves salute it, if it doesn’t move paint it”
Here is an image of one of the more interesting projects that I ever worked on. It is a “wooden steam schooner”, whatever that actually means. It was a fascinating little vessel, which unfortuately was eventually scrapped becasuse she has deteriorated so badly. Admittantly she had been laid up for decades, but you can see the extent of some of the rust (as well as rot) through out the wooden hull [:O]
Yeah, those are old school sailors alright… The Life captions say Jan 1942, and I was wondering on which cruiser the series of photos was taken, and if those guys survived the Solomons campaign. Well this photo answere the question as to which ship. USS Portland, one of the few USN 8” cruisers to survive Guadalcanal.
Ah yes, salt water, the true universal solent [:)]
Another factor is the size of the ship compared to crew size. Military ships generally have a larger number of crew per displacement than civil ships, so, except in time of heavy operations one has the hands to do cleanup work. So I generally only make rust buckets of civil vessels. I do weather military ships some, but not like I do civil ones, especially those that do not carry passengers (cruise ships, for example, seem to be kept quite clean, versus fishing boats).
I always laughed at the part in the movie “The Aviator”, where Hughes visits the factory where the Spruce Goose is being built, and there are big showers of sparks as the workers grind on the airframe.
