I’ve started weathering (OK, having some fun with) my 1/700 Liberty ship. I’ve decided to depict the John Randolph, outbound to Murmansk in convoy PQ 16 in May 1942, as one of the first Liberty ships to make that run. Many of the photos I’ve found show Liberty ships incredibly, well, nasty in between trips to the yard. Even though all of them are in black and white, you can tell that almost every square yard of some of them is covered with rust or corrosion of some kind.
Easy enough to do, and I’ve tried to be restrained, but - what else? I’ve got a jar of Polly Scale “dust” and am wondering if small amounts, discreetly applied, could simulate the salt encrusted around the bottoms of vertical surfaces. Any other suggestions? Good color references of wartime Liberty ships are rather sparse.
I’ve looked at lots of Liberty pics too. Almost every one seems to me to have streaks of soot running down from the scuppers over the outside of the hull. It might be rust, but I think it’s more likely soot. Many of them seem to have a lot of scuff marks from lighters and barges coming alongside too.
A ship going to Murmank might also have a lot of ice on the upper works. I have no idea how you would model that.
In addition to general rust and scuffs on the hull one of the most noticeable items of weathering is soot from the stack. The boilers would typically burn pretty cleanly to avoid making smoke, but every day or so you need to blow tubes (basically using steam to blow the soot off of the boiler tubes and out the stack). This leaves flecks of black soot all over anything downwind. In 1/700 scale effect of the flecks scattered on the deck would not be visible, but the top of the signal mast on the flying bridge should be stained black starting several feet below the top of the stack. The top of the charley noble (galley stack) should have similar staining due to the coal smoke.
One other weathering item is staining from the discharges located above the waterline (if you are doing a fully loaded ship they are just barely above it). There are several located on the either side amidships, as well as two aft on the port side under the forward end of the afterhouse. Most of these discharge liquids from either the accommodation drains (deck drains, sinks, and showers) or toilets. There are also a few discharges forward, but they seldom would have anything coming out of them.
One less noticeable (at least in 1/700) item is grease from the cargo runners. They are slushed with a very messy grease that has a habit of leaving black streaks on anything the wire touches, particularly on the rails (when lowering the cargo hook to the pier the runner from the offshore winch usually rubs across the top of the rail).
Thanks for the detailed info, Chris … and no, I am not going to try and simulate soot flakes. I’m not that anal. At least I don’t think I am. Now about the color of the discharge from those accomodation drains …
