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Painting the hull – Part 2. The hull colour

Time to make a decision on what colour the hull should be…🤔 The instructions say ‘Navy Blue’ but that just doesn’t look right, just too light. In the ‘photos of the splendid model in the National Maritime museum the hull appears to be black while in the colour video clips on YouTube it appears dark, possibly black, but in keeping with the ‘boys in blue’ nature of the vessel I think a very dark blue would be more appropriate. I have seen this on some other Thames Police Launch models that I have admired and it looks ‘right’ so to speak. Just to convince myself I generated a ‘colour palette’ in Photoshop to make a direct comparison between black and a couple of deep blues that looked like possible candidates. I used the RAL co-ordinates of the two blues in question to generate the colours and decided on RAL 5004 as the favourite and then ordered a couple of 400ml rattle cans from a custom paint supplier, I chose a satin finish rather than full gloss. They arrived a few days later and I did a spray test on a scrap piece of board with the anti-fouling below with a white waterline between and was very pleased with my choice. The red oxide was carefully masked off and the area to be painted cleaned off with some panel wipe on a clean paper towel, then into the spray booth for the first light coat. This painting was done during a very cold spell in early January 2019 and I took the precaution of taking the boat indoors the night before to keep it warm and also pre-heat the workshop before bringing it out, I also used my hot to gently warm the hull prior to spraying and then again after the first coat was applied. I’d like to think that this helped the process and prevented the seasonal temperature and humidity levels causing any adverse effects on the finish. The second coat was applied about 20 minutes later and the solvents flashed off by the heat gun again. I’ll add that the heat gun was used at a distance of about two feet and the booth is fan vented to outside and…. ‘I am that masked man’. Back on the bench and with the masking removed the paint finish looks very satisfactory to me, I just need to apply the white ‘Trimline Tape’ for the watermark to finish the hull before spraying with a couple of coats of satin lacquer. Then it will be ready for it’s first showing at the London model show at Ally Pally on the St. Albans Model Engineering Society stand alongside my RAF Crash Tender. More on that ‘Trimline Tape’ later……🤕

5 years ago by robbob