Hi,
Have been a bit busy at work combined with a bit of loss of MOJO recently.
Decided to make use of today and I've re-visited my waterline which was holding up my progress fixing and rigging the mast proper and fixing parts inside. I decided to apply a cheat and apply the old-style antifouling on a line based on the main rubbing strake along the shell plate. That means it's curved, not following any straight line or angle associated with trim. That means I can move onto fixing the mast and figuring out ballasting properly as she was far too trimmed before going by photos but stable for such a small model. She won't be the same as VIC 32 / 27 in that respect but ...meh.
I have a love/hate of Revell enamels but they continue to be a million times better than Humbrol. Two coats of antifoul applied so far today "Revell SM 331" (satin) -only one teeny tiny spot of bleeding on the stern quarter which looks more like my tamiya tape slipped without notice when I overlapped it so easy to touch up with black when I sort out the painting of the rudder and fit the prop. After my Tamiya masking tape was applied I rubbed back the original antifoul line using a 1" wide strip cut from a Tamia 400 grade sanding sponge, wiped with damp cloth then used a tack-rag.
Daren't turn it over for a day or so now! Next job before fitting the mast might be to pick-out some upper strakes in white, cut the name and registration on my sillouette from white vinyl and apply them then seal everything with Vallejo satin polyurethane. Then I can fit the mast and complete the rigging. Batteries etc. are after that -I need to re-think my rudder servo also.
Thanks for the interest and comments so far,
Rich
PS: As this hull is well under 2 feet long, it easier so sit with it on my lap and apply a thin (4mm?) band of tape first and move around and look at it by eye. Then start from the oposite side, peel back if it doesn't look symmetrical and re-apply. Then more layers of 10mm or so tape applied to give a thicker band for accidental brush strokes. I remove the tape AS EARLY as I dare to try not to leave too much hard edge! NORMALLY due to nature of curvature on a ships hull I do all the antifoul first then mask-off bottom-up as that's the natural curve for masking. Occasionally I get away with it like for this re-doing it from top down as it is a very slab-sided shape away from the bilge, particularly forwards.