Ship Hull Painting Question
cr...@earthlink.net
A little bit of brain damage here, but can someone correct me if I am
masking/painting the wrong way to get clean red/black/grey lines?
First spray a line of black in the approximate area where the black
line goes.
Mask with the appropriate thickness of tape for the black line.
Mask off more of the hull and spray red.
Mask off more of the hull and spray grey.
Is this the right order/procedure?
Help out this old target builder -
thx - Craig
Shawn
<cr...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
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cr...@earthlink.net
first so it will be easier to mask off the other colors?
Craig
The Laws
topping that way. Use the edges of the tape you put down to cover the black
to mask for the other colors. Pete
<cr...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
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Les Pickstock
"Shawn" <as...@aserversomewhere.com> wrote in message
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Normally this is true. But it is easier to get a neat "boot topping" by
doing black/red/grey. The lightest first is applicable where a dark colour
underneath would "shade" the top colours. In this instance its not as
critical and, in fact, a slightly darker tone to the red maybe advantageous.
Alexander Arnakis
The way I would do it is this: First, paint the upper hull gray, going
a little beyond the waterline. Then, mask the upper hull down to the
top of the boot topping, and paint the lower part of the hull red.
Finally, mask the lower hull up to the bottom of the boot topping, and
paint your black stripe.
This way, you only have to mask twice, and you don't have the problem
of trying to cover the black with the gray.
BTW, I've found that Floquil "Zinc Chromate Primer" (#130601) makes an
excellent hull red.
rwsm...@rcn.com
Works for me and I keep winning Regionals with my ships.
Don Stauffer
without lots of coats. Personally I'd do grey first, red second, and
black last. Consider black trim tape instead of painting.
Don Stauffer
>
> Normally this is true. But it is easier to get a neat "boot topping" by
> doing black/red/grey. The lightest first is applicable where a dark colour
> underneath would "shade" the top colours. In this instance its not as
> critical and, in fact, a slightly darker tone to the red maybe advantageous.
>
>
A little OT, but Red Oxide primer makes a good red for merchant red bottoms.
Jim
painted red on ships? Why not just paint the whole thing grey? While I'm
at it, why the black stripe at the water line?
Boris Beizer
"Jim" <ord...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
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> Not a ship builder, so I have to ask. Why is the hull below the water
> line painted red on ships? Why not just paint the whole thing grey?
> While I'm at it, why the black stripe at the water line?
Anti-fouling paint. Used to be mostly red-lead. Nowaday's anti-fouling
paint comes in various colors... blue, red, green. Very expensive stuff.
About $100 to $150 per gallon. Topside gray paint is a whole lot cheaper ..
$25-$30 a gallon. When you're using hundreds or thousands of gallons to
paint a ship, the cost difference adds up. Military ships are gray as a
sort of camouflage. Merchant ships are often white (e.g. cruise ships) or
black for visibility .. just what you don't want on a military ship. As for
the stripe, it is to demarcate the two different paints. Without some sort
of stripe to paint to, after a few coats, the water line and the boundary
between the top and bottom paints would look like spaghetti on amphetamine.
This is especially important as topside painting was often done at sea or in
a calm anchorage.
Boris
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Alexander Arnakis
<bsq...@sprintmail.com> wrote:
>Anti-fouling paint. Used to be mostly red-lead. Nowaday's anti-fouling
>paint comes in various colors... blue, red, green. Very expensive stuff.
>About $100 to $150 per gallon. Topside gray paint is a whole lot cheaper ..
>$25-$30 a gallon. When you're using hundreds or thousands of gallons to
>paint a ship, the cost difference adds up. Military ships are gray as a
>sort of camouflage. Merchant ships are often white (e.g. cruise ships) or
>black for visibility .. just what you don't want on a military ship. As for
>the stripe, it is to demarcate the two different paints. Without some sort
>of stripe to paint to, after a few coats, the water line and the boundary
>between the top and bottom paints would look like spaghetti on amphetamine.
>This is especially important as topside painting was often done at sea or in
>a calm anchorage.
>
Just as a sidelight, the Titanic (and White Star ships generally)
didn't have a separate boot stripe, whereas the Cunard ships typically
had a white boot stripe. One of the reasons the Gunze Sangyo model of
the Lusitania has a hull molded in white is that it's much easier to
render the boot stripe that way. You just mask the scribed lines and
paint the top of the hull black and the bottom hull red, leaving the
boot topping in the white molded plastic.
WWII Italian ships apparently used a chromate green below the
waterline.
rwsm...@rcn.com
> Not a ship builder, so I have to ask. Why is the hull below the water line
> painted red on ships? Why not just paint the whole thing grey? While I'm
> at it, why the black stripe at the water line?
Red happened to be the easiest color to achieve with anti-fouling
coatings at the time they were introduced. Black boot topping came in
around the time warships went from coal fired to oil fired to keep the
oil slicks on harbor waters from making a grungy ring around the ship.
rwsm...@rcn.com
> black for visibility .. just what you don't want on a military ship. As for
> the stripe, it is to demarcate the two different paints. Without some sort
> of stripe to paint to, after a few coats, the water line and the boundary
> between the top and bottom paints would look like spaghetti on amphetamine.
> This is especially important as topside painting was often done at sea or in
> a calm anchorage.
It came about due to oil fired boilers and the oily residue in harbor
waters from fuel spills. Admirals didn't like the grunge line it left on
their pretty ships.
rwsm...@rcn.com
> Just as a sidelight, the Titanic (and White Star ships generally)
> didn't have a separate boot stripe, whereas the Cunard ships typically
> had a white boot stripe. One of the reasons the Gunze Sangyo model of
> the Lusitania has a hull molded in white is that it's much easier to
> render the boot stripe that way. You just mask the scribed lines and
> paint the top of the hull black and the bottom hull red, leaving the
> boot topping in the white molded plastic.
Generally Flower class corvettes, civil registered Liberty ships and
most WWII era merchant ships did not have boot tops.
> WWII Italian ships apparently used a chromate green below the
> waterline.
CVN-65 originally had a green epoxy anti-fouling coating and CV-10 went
into wartime service with no anti-fouling coating just the primer
(apparently she had quite a beard when she went in for her first refit).
Don Stauffer
paint. It is cheap, but very good protection. Similar to why barns are
red. Red Oxide paint was very cheap, but very good protection.
I wonder if other, non-red-oxide bottom paints are red 'cause of
tradition of red oxide?
Jim
grey? Just seems like it would be more economically feasible to just paint
the whole thing one color. Does the US Navy currently paint the bottom of
it's ship hulls red-oxide? The closest I ever got to the Navy was flying
over it, as part of the speed bump being deployed in Sept. 1990.
"Don Stauffer" <stau...@usfamily.net> wrote in message
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Frank Koval
hull thereby creating excessive drag. It's also a lot more expensive.
Frank
"Jim" <ord...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
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Boris Beizer
> the
> grey? Just seems like it would be more economically feasible to just
> paint
> the whole thing one color.
The "red-oxide" if I recall, is not iron oxide, but lead oxide. Very toxic
stuff and a decidedly ecological no no. I mentioned the price differential
earlier. Bottom paint at $100-$150/gallon versus top paint at $25-$40
/gallon. So it is certainly not more economical to paint it all one color.
Especially since the painting is done by sailors who would otherwise be
playing craps or something. Also, while topside painting can be done
anywhere without special precautions, (e.g., at anchor), bottom paint has to
be done in drydock and requires special precautions because of the toxic
nature of the paint. As for durability, nowadays, bottom paints are
deliberately not durable. These paints are designed to be ablative. That
is, they deliberately erode, taking the nasty little barnacle nymphs and red
algae along with it. Both the navies of the world and the shippers are very
sensitive to cost issues when it comes to painting ships (thousands and
thousands of gallons) so they do it in the most economical way. It isn't
a matter of style or tradition.
Boris
--
rwsm...@rcn.com
> Depends on the specific red, but red oxide is a very popular marine
> paint. It is cheap, but very good protection. Similar to why barns are
> red. Red Oxide paint was very cheap, but very good protection.
>
> I wonder if other, non-red-oxide bottom paints are red 'cause of
> tradition of red oxide?
The single most important aspect of anti-fouling coatings on ships'
bottoms is the chemistry that inhibits marine growth, everything else is
secondary.
rwsm...@rcn.com
> So then is red-oxide used on the bottom because it is more durable than the
> grey? Just seems like it would be more economically feasible to just paint
> the whole thing one color. Does the US Navy currently paint the bottom of
> it's ship hulls red-oxide? The closest I ever got to the Navy was flying
> over it, as part of the speed bump being deployed in Sept. 1990.
Most USN surface ships are red, subs vary from red to black. It's
chemistry not color that's important.