Day 185.

So, back when I painted the main rail I decided to go with black.  That was the color the practicum used, and about 1/3 to 1/2 the Bluenose models I’ve seen use black for the main rail.

However, recently I’ve been going through a lot of old photos of the actual Bluenose ship and I came to the decision that black was wrong.  The main rail is white.  This is what the photos show, and this is what the Model Shipways Bluenose kit plans show.

I’ve decided to repaint the rails.

Of course, the main rail, buffalo rail, and monkey rail are all already installed, so I’m going to do this in-place.  I need to cover all the black paint on the rails with white.

The original black main rail and monkey rail.  This is wrong – it should have been white.

Unfortunately, it is really hard to cover up black with white.  (You typically want to be painting a darker color on top of a lighter color, not the other way around.)  To ensure this doesn’t take hundreds of coats and still come out uneven, I’m going so sand off as much of the black as I can.

I masked off everything except the rails, and sanded off all the black paint.

The main rail, buffalo rail, and monkey board were all sanded down to remove as much of the black paint as possible.  Before I started sanding, I masked off the bulwarks, deck and hull.  I don’t want to risk getting paint (or even a lot of dust) on those parts.

After things were sanded down, I applied a good coat of grey primer by hand.  This evened things out, and covered up the remaining black with a nice neutral grey.

Finally, the boat went back under the airbrush, where I applied three coats of white paint.

A few coats of white paint later…

The newly painted bow.

The newly painted stern.