Dancing around pesky work obligations, I've been painting fake stanchions and waterways. I'm using Model Shipways primer and paints. Now, I consider myself a decently capable painter but…
why is white paint so hard???
Thick paint/brushstrokes, poor color transitions, lots of obvious touch-ups. I gradually developed a method that works for me - especially with white paint.
- Use quality brushes
- Pick the right brush type/size
- Dampen the bristles before loading paint
- Pause and clean the brush often
- Lots of thin coats.
Unfortunately, the starboard side of the quarter deck was where I had started and it suffered through the aforementioned education. I scraped off most or all of the paint twice, which also led to rough surfaces, misshapen stanchions, etc. Poor quality I just couldn't accept.
I sat down yesterday, took a deep breath and decided to start over. Hey, once you tear off the first piece it's easy!

Once that band-aid was ripped off, I decided to use this as an opportunity built around pre-painting.
After some clean up and a bit of filler, I masked off the waterway and gave it two coats of medium gray paint. I knew I was starting with no stanchions for support so I gradually tacked the 1/16" thick bottom waist plank (pre-painted on the inside) to the top hull plank/deck surface in 6-8 spots using super glue and finally wood-glued the end onto the filler block at the transom. I followed the same method for the 1/32" top waist plank, keeping it flush with the inside of the bottom waist plank as much as possible. I has some minor paint touch up along the joint.
I had also pre-painted a strip of 1/8" square stock for the replacement stanchions and left one side unfinished, which will attach to the sides. I'll scrape a small area of the waterway and side at each location and probably use only spots of super glue. My hope is only light touchup will be needed. The stanchions shown in the photo are dry fit and I hope to complete this section of the deck in the next couple days.
This approach is a whole lot cleaner and neater and I'm pretty pleased. But now there is a real danger I'll want to do the same for the rest of the deck.

In fact, I'm already 99% sure I'll do the same on the port side of the quarter deck, for continuity. We'll see about the fore deck!
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