Waterline stripes are what most modellers come here for: thin printed lines from 0.3 to 1 mm wide, supplied in lengths over two metres and usable on any hull you happen to be building. Beside them sit three-dimensional ship decals, relief-printed lifebuoys covering 1:144 through 1:350, naval ensigns and the markings carried by rescue craft.
Ship model decals answer the details that resist both airbrush and brush: a dead-straight boundary along a curved hull, a ring barely a millimetre across, a flag that has to lie flat against a mast. Matching stripe width to scale and handling relief film are the two things worth getting right, and both are covered below.
A ship decal is a thin printed film that slides off its backing paper once wetted and settles onto the plastic. On ships the dominant item is not a national marking but the waterline stripe, the straight line dividing the underwater hull from the topsides. Laying a printed line is quicker and far less risky than spraying one over tape, and on small hulls it is often the only way to keep that boundary crisp. Relief-printed lifebuoys belong here too: rings with a raised profile that save painting a part the size of a pinhead.
The smaller the hull, the narrower the line. For 1:700 ship model kits widths of 0.3 to 0.5 mm read correctly; on a 1:350 ship model kit 0.7 to 1 mm looks natural. Stripes come in lengths of 2 820 mm and are tied to no particular kit, so one sheet serves several hulls.
Buoys are printed for 1:350, 1:200 and 1:144. The raised layer takes a light shade or a thinned wash, so the finished ring reads as a separately cast and painted fitting rather than as film.
Pick naval ensigns and ship-specific markings by the date you are modelling. Warships changed ensigns more often than they changed paint, so it pays to check which flag a vessel actually flew in the year you have in mind.
Store decals dry and out of daylight; an older sheet that has gone brittle usually revives under a thin coat of gloss varnish. The hull you will put them on comes from the ship model kits, anything from a harbour launch to a battleship.
