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Bryan, great looking Corsair! The paintjob looks awesome, as does the chipped paint and weathering!
A few questions about the carrier deck:
-are the popsicle stick you used the regular size?
-what did you use for the frame?
Looks good!
The sticks I used are 'Craft Sticks' sold by Michaels. They're 108mm long by 10mm wide and come with rounded ends. I squared up the ends using a wood chisel and hammer.
The frame was an old picture frame I had laying around. To give the sticks something to lay on I also picked up some white foam board at Michaels and cut it to size to fit in the picture frame.
Instead of just running the sticks in a horizontal or vertical direction I decided to run them diagonally for a more appealing look (in my opinion). This complicated things a tad because all ends of the sticks next to the frame had to be cut at an angle. The angle didn't have to be perfect because I came back when all the sticks were laid and dressed up the edge with a small bit of balsa wood so you couldn't see any gaps between the sticks and the frame. I then masked and painted the white stripes and then applied a wash to the deck.
All-in-all, the deck cost about $5. I had the frame so that was nothing. A box of 1000 craft sticks was about $2.50 and a large piece of foam board was about the same. The leftover foam board makes great bases or backdrops for taking photo's of your models.
An added bonus-the craft sticks make great paint stirrers.
