1/72 Revell Type VIIC/41

[TristanR]

I've been pressing on with the chipping part.  For the top hull, I have decided to go with good Tamiya Sky Grey.  It's a slightly warmer grey than the 'Hellgrau' or light grey in my lifecolor Kriegsmarine set.  With blue on the bottom, I don't want it too blue of a grey on the top. 
Along with rust and wood I want to keep about 30% of the paint work in warm tones to contrast the bluey hull.

Chipping begins! I have found that  doing two coats of hairspray is a critical step, one coat and you have to really work at the paint to chip it, resulting in a more scrubbed look than chipping.  It's almost like one layer of hairspray seals the underneath paint, and a second coat does the chipping.



Grey coat for the the other side of the bow, notice how a thin a layer of paint it is, just 2 or three sweeps of the airbrush.


Here the mid section has been chipped and the aft section just painted on.  I don't want to chip this part too much to I put a slightly thicker coat of grey on.

[/size]Another place where two sections meet, I will chip away the seam.



The nose is heavily chipped, maybe too heavily chipped , but there are photos of very battered looking uboats.
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The anchor was painted with typical orange rust. It looks really dry, not sure if it's appropriate on a sub for some reason.


I did some post shading on the hull.
The main blue is basically Tamiya Medium blue
The undercoat is 50/50 hull red and flat black.

Some postshading. Building up thin coats of the dark browny undercoat over the medium blue, I can add some different tones to the hull.
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The hull gets a lot darker towards the keel, I'm putting lots of fake shadowing around the hull, it's really obvious from underneath, but when lit from above it's a lot more subtle.
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I couldn't resist diggin out my old deck waething test.  Not bad, but the wood needs to be less yellow, and more teak like I think.


Cheers!

[tore]

Interesting,artistic and clever wheathering, a bit different from the colours I am used to. Again a word about the wooden deck. Stay away from teak the germans would not use resources to import teak in WW2. I guess the wood was mostly a type of German pine, for the uboats refitted in Norway I heard some times they used norwegian spruce. Any how as  soon as the deck got chipped, the order from the high command was clear, they had to patch up the dammage and the deck had to be very dark grey. In fact the I believe the only paintbox stored in an Uboat was the dark deckpainting in view of the planes. Not as spectacular as your wheathering but substancial better for camuflage for airplanes.
Tore

[TristanR]

Hey Tore,
I hear you regarding the decking, I've put a lot of effort into this laser cut deck, with the purpose of sanding the paint back to reveal the wood grain underneath.  Maybe i can have patches of the dark grey deck paint, but I will be sacrificing accuracy for the purposes of a flashy paint job!


To this end, I am not using U-764 as my boat number, I bought the diary and it shows a clear picture with an older magnetic compass faring. 
I am keen on U-991 now, mainly because there are no photos I can find (so I can claim accuracy), and I like the diving eagle emblem.
It was also a training boat, with one 73 day patrol, a nice long patrol where lots of lovely weathering can happen.
Finally, it was an Operation Deadlight boat, I am thinking of depicting it with the black flag of surrender.

[tore]

I guess the U 991 operated mostly on the Norwegian coast having the norwegian naval mainbase at Horten. The original paintings would probably be close to the U 995 se photo below of U 995 May 8th 1945 Trondheim. U 991 was in the days before the surrender transferred from Horten to Bergen and under operation Pledge transferred from Bergen to Scapa Flow arriving June 4th. 1945. This convoy consisted of U-218, U-530, U-778, U-875, U-907, U-991, U-1004, U-1005, U-1057, U-1271, U1301, U 1307 and U-2328. Altogether 13 U boats out of about 100 surrendering in Norway. The transfer was done by the German crews and they were indeed instructed to fly a black flag. She later was  sunk under operation Deadlight . Her only war patrol lasted about 73 days and from Kristiansand, Norway to Bergen, Irish Coast, French coast and return to Bergen a patrol pattern I have done many times on board U 995 during the months of October- December. Unfortunately for the weathering, apart from one time our fwd. stb casing was smashed, we never experienced much of a "weathering" in these waters, but as you certainly have both the skill and interest for weathering why not? Below is the last photo of U 995 under german WW2 command CO Hans Georg Hess, alongside the submarine pen in Trondheim, Norway May 8th 1945.
 As an extra, U-995`s last and youngest ever CO of a  german submarine, Hans Georg Hess interned in a war prisoncamp in Trondheim, Norway.
Tore

[OldNoob]

Beautiful work!

[SG]

Wow!!  
Well done, keep it upp!

[TristanR]

Thanks folks!
[/size]Tore, I hear you about not doing teak, Thankyou!  I think I will try and grey it out with black and raw umber, fortunately I have 11 previous versions to mess up. 
[/size]The middle one in the image below shows the un-painted wood that will be visible once I sand through.  I mixed acrylic inks in with the sanding sealer (this stuff is a must)  And successfully tinted the sanding sealer.   
I then picked out a few planks with raw umber and burnt sienna inks.
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This is before the deck gets it's black grey coating.

[/size]meanwhile, I had a go at doing some rusty effects.  It didn't go well, and the chipping was a bit soft, a bit too flakey.  I think I can do better than this, so I'm going to repaint one side first and see.
[/size]This is the before.


This time I am using AK heavy chipping effect, mainly because the smell of the hairspray is getting a bit tiresome.

I snapped this to show you what it goes on like, it's almost frothy, you have to go low pressure and high volume and it looks like this, but it dries ok, I use a hairdryer.  Two coats at least.


I wanted more opaque colour - less lilac looking, and crisper chip edges

The soft flaky edges before might have been because of water I used to thin the paint. This time I used X-20 (the acrylic one).  The first coat was straight Sky grey, put on thinly (because I was scared), maybe it looked lilac because of the dark red-brown undercoat coming through, or seen in contrast to the medium blue hull.  So I will mix a little medium grey into the Sky Grey to warm up the tone a bit.

Here is the after,



[/size]This is the other, older side, since I will repaint it, I'm going to practice some more rust. 

The technique is basically the same method you do with oils, but with lifecolor acrylics (specifically the 4 colour rust set).  You need three brushes, a flat wide one for soaking the surface, a very fine one for spotting the paint on, and finally a large clean brush .

This only works on a matt surface that hold the water, if it beads on the surface it's not going to work, I don't use any clear-coats because I am scared they will bead the water, although a flat coat might work.
So you load a postage stamp sized patch of hull with water, so it's damp.  Then immediately, with a small brush apply tiny amounts of watered down paint onto the damp surface. It will dissolve into the surface.
Next you switch to the clean brush brush, and pull down the paint spot if you want a streak.  It takes practice, but has a nice water-coulorish effect.

The overall goal is to not produce anything like a paintbrush stroke.  When you do one, you have to wash it off with the large water brush. 



I don't know this is better than oils, I have only done a bit with oils and found them kind of greasy.  I also found it hard to build up layers without having to leave it to dry for ages. 

The best (and worst) thing about acrylics is that they dry fast, so you have to work fast.  But you can build up translucent layers quicker. 

This is the newly painted side, the grey is lighter and greyer, the rust brown looks pretty good on it.


Here's an awful timelapse that I tried to make with my phone.


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[SG]

Fantastic result. The right products, a pair of blessed hands and a most clever mind. Am speechless!

[nathan211]

Tristan-
Thanks for your reply on my forum post, I just saw your build log here and am very excited to go over all the details of your process. You have done some really excellent work here and will surely help me in my build.
Great job!
Nathan

[tore]

Wheathering is appearantly close to your hearth and the skill is second to none. The look you have achieved  reminds me of the old U 995 docking in Kiel end 1960 after being laid up for some 6 years in Norway without any maintainance at all, would hardly happen in wartime. I guess the excessive pressurehull corrosion derives from that periode.
Anyhow the similarity is there and I am showing the image below.
Tore

[TristanR]

Hey Tore,
Thanks for that photo of u995, wonderful reference!


I have been going off these heavily weathered photos I found in uboot im focus. no.4.  It's a type IID of a training flotilla in the baltic sea taken in '41 '42.  Since 991 was a training boat I feel ok with copying it's weathering and paint, I have even copied the camo scheme, where it's a darker grey towards the bow and stern.







Deck weathering





I stained the deck with this sanding sealer mixed with some ink to tint it



After that I picked out individual planks with more ink.



For the weather protection, I am going very very dark grey.



Sanding next, using tape to try and mask the hatches here and there.









Looks a lot more yellow in these pictures.





Hull painting part two.


The chipping process with hairspray invariably leaves a semi gloss finish, which has been bugging me, so I'm going to repaint it with the lifecolor 'Blacks' paint set.  Interesting fact, does not include black.
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I want to try and get this spotchy salty look from this photo.  Once repainted I will hopefully have a matt surface to do the next step.



I'm going to use dunklegrau lifecolor on a wet surface.  If the surface is glossy the water will just bead up, which is no good, you want it to soak into the matt surface.











Conning tower is almost there, I printed some periscopes that are a prefect fit into 3mm aluminum tube.  The brass rails worked out nice, it's going to be a shame to paint them.

[tore]

Your weathering is still amazing allthough you know my opinion I can not remember ever seen the wood through the dark grey/black deckpaint. A mall remark on the two "blisters" seen on the image below. If you go to my mailbox page 201, reply 3003 you`ll see my opinion of these I call "ejector drainers".
Tore

[TristanR]

Thanks on the info for the ejector drainers Tore! I keep forgetting to drill them out, since I've been doing a lot of painting.

Some small modelling progress,
I got the 3D printed side intake pipe on, I almost lines up with the schnorkel, It's a little off centre with the schnorkel mast, and a little too forward, but I think I will modify the schnorkel to fit.





There is more soldering to be done, there are 2 more guard rails. The top one is on another laser cut buck I made, it's a very difficult shape to do, as the railing is at a angle and flares out in the middle.

In the deck I cut the postions for all the vertical posts that make up this railing, I copied those positions and included them in this buck, you can see the holes underneath.  This way I can insert the brass into these holes and when it's all soldered together, it should just drop into the corresponding holes on the deck.


These rails sit just forward of the tower, and have a wires rails connected to the other railing, hense the little tabs that were spares on the eduard set.



Here's one installed, it wasn't a great fit but lose enough after a fight.


Underneath you can see how it's held bu the laser cut holes.


The heat transfer problem I've bee having with these wood bucks went away when I switched to this blowtorch soldering iron



here they are in place, that's a lot of railing. Got to do the other side now.



I've been further painting the deck, the photos are not showing it but the deck is a lot browner, and I started putting eduard little hinges on the hatches.





Did some weathering on the guns, and added whiter salt stains to the tops of the saddle tanks,


Thanks for looking!

[tore]

Trisdan.
Excellent railing,I guess the wooden deck comes out a bit too strongly, as mention before the German regulations were strict on the dark colour of the deck in view of the air surveillance.
I assume the schnorchel locking pin eventually shall be fitted.
Tore

[maillemaker]

Is the 3D model of the uboat available for download?

Great looking build!

Steve