Technics vol.5: Scribing over raised panel lines

Scribing to obtain recessed panel lines is a tedious and difficult technique to master. Practice is the most important factor to get good results. Remember that there are alternative weathering techniques as i showed earlier, that included drawing with a sharp pencil along the raised details. However, old models with poor fit sometimes have the raised details destroyed by the building process that sometimes involve sanding and filling with putty. When this is the case, you may need to work all the panel lines and building raised details is far more difficult then to inscribe them all. In the pictures bellow, i will give you some suggestions on how i do inscribing on my kits. I am working on an Hasegawa F-5E in 1/32 scale.

First i take a sharp pencil and draw the panel lines to make them more visible before inscribing. I used the raised details as a guide to run the pencil along the panel lines.

These are my favorite tools: i like Tamiya scribing tool as an easy and effective instrument to do the job. A ruler and a very flexible piece of styrene are useful in order to align the scriber along the panel lines. Another very useful tool are these plastic label makers with adhesive on the back side. I allways work over a soft piece of cloth the keeps the model still under the pressure of my hand but allows easy movement of the part to get easy  access  to all the angles necessary to inscribe.

Once the panel lines are marked, i glue the label maker along them to create a point of support to the inscribing tool.

Keeping the sharp end of the blade at a 90 degrees angle to the surface of the model, first i push the nice along the panel line. This offers more control. Then i pull it back as it now runs inside a very subtle recessed panel previously done by the first movement.

Once all the panel where inscribed, a wet sand all the model with a 400 grid sand paper.

Some mistakes often occur. They are easily solved with some putty and sanding. Once this is done, all you need is to inscribe again. 

The finished work. I like to wet sand the model again with  600 and 1200 sand paper to get a smooth finish on the palstic surface.

Techniques vol.4: weathering with hair spray

                       This is an easy and useful weathering technique.If you want a paint peeling effect on your kit, maybe this will help you. I work with acrylics, but probably this makes no difference.

First you do the base color that will show trough the peeling effect of the technique. I found important to seal the base with a good gloss coat. I like future floor polisher.

Next you need to get a can of hair spray. Buy your own and don't still your wife's one!

Get a good coat of the hair spray over the part you want to weather. I was going to show the wood through the paint on the skid of a piloted V1 flying bomb.

Next a i added the color the is peeling from the subject. In this case a dark grey color.

Next take a brush, dip into warm water and star gently rubbing the paint from the kit part.

Remember to stop just before you thing that you are done. If you think you need, then you can do a little more. If you overdo, you will have to re-start.

Another coat of future will prevent further weathering and protect your work.

A final coat of your favorite mat coat will do the deal. I like Humbrol mat coat.

Bellow i have a few other examples with some color variation two show that it works with several different subjects. I hope you enjoyed it!

Techniques vol.3: Re-scribing or drawing on raised panel lines

                 Trough out the many years i have been modelling, the hobby has shown a lot of progress in the area of molding technology and working equipment. Back in 1982, when i started building plastic kits, there was no internet with the thousands of sites devoted to the art of kit construction, there were also no magazines, airbrush was an expensive tool not available to young modelers and aftermarket industry was at best in its infancy. However, it was a great period to become a modeler here in Brazil. Revell kits were being manufacturer here, at a low cost and several new kits were hitting the shelves at our local hobby shops every other week. Aircraft history magazines were becoming available witch made modeling much more interesting. In the next ten years, several new brands were imported and we started to get used to build Tamiya, Hasegawa, Hobbycraft, Italeri and Airfix kits. 

               Several of this new brands soon started to release kits with new molding standards. Perhaps, one of the most important was the introduction of recessed panel lines. An issue that started many intense debates, the recessed panel lines soon became an important condition for modelers to decide what kit they were going to build. New releases of  kits that had previously been available with raised panels indicate the importance of this subject to the industry and the costumers. 

              However, some important subjects remained neglected by the manufacturers trough out all these years. I remember back in 1982 when Revell from Brazil released the 1/48 scale Boeing B-17F. I was excited and got it as soon as it arrived at one of our local hobby shops. It was my first 1/48 scale kit. It was big and, by that time, was a great model. I build it and was pleased with the results. As time passe by, my B-17 became old and quite not up to my modelling standards. I salvaged some parts and the rest became history. Since then, no manufacturer has shown interest in releasing a modern kit of the B-17 in 1/48 scale.

              About a month ago, while visiting the last hobby shop still in business in my hometown, i saw the re-box of the now old Revell B-17F in 1/48 scale. It is the same kit i built back in 1982. Detail is minimal with raised panel lines. However, i decided to re-visit the subject with a new perspective. I was not going to re-scribe  all the panel lines, but i new from the beginning that the key to a good end result was a nice paint job. So i decided to use the technique described bellow. I don't know if anyone has published this before, but it works quite nice and is much simpler than trying to scribe all the panel lines on a 1/48 scale B-17!

First i painted the camouflage. I use a post shading technique, highlighting the central area of the panels with a lighter tone of the basic color

My initial weathering tool is a 0,7 mm pencil available everywhere

Using the raised panel lines for orientation, i draw the structural panels of the kit. I don't worry about precision as this is a weathering technique.

The detail is not overdone as you can imagine looking to close to the kit part. Bellow you have a comparison between the two wings, the left one being the highlighted of course.

I added some increased weathered effect by airbrushing Tamiya smoke along the panel lines. The control surfaces were also weathered by the technique usually used on WW1 aircraft.

The weathering complete just waiting for the mat coat.

Here you have 3 pictures of the completed effect of the technique on the lower fuselage and wings

Now, on the next two pictures, the final effect after highlighting with Tamiya smoke.

The technique works with darker tones too.

Weathering over black painted models

I personally don´t like washes. I think that the technique is difficult and the results were not always the same. However, there is one situation were it is the best option. Working with dark colors, specially black, may hide the details that you try so much to put in your models. Here, oil washes with light colors may help to show your work in a way that is not that artificial. While looking at black planes, you often see some kind of light brown or gray colors along the panel lines. That´s the central idea on weathering on black: wash the panel lines with white!
Here you have an example of what i am saying. You can see the light color along the panel lines.

Bellow you see a sequence of pictures from the weathering of a SR71A Blackbird. It illustrates the weathering of the kit using the white wash technique.

1) Here you have a picture of one of the rudders of the blackbird. It is already molded in black.  It has recessed panel lines, that were necessary for the washes.

2) To get the base color, i used different shades of very dark grey. Black and white were used to get some tone variation.

3)The blackbird is not really black. It is in fact a very dark grey. Here you see a comparison between the grey painted rudder and the bare plastic part. Don´t worry: once you apply a gloss coat, it will turn darker.

4) To get more perspective, i painted some panels in a lighter grey shade.

5) Once the panels were painted, everything is sealed under a heavy coat of Future floor polisher.

6) With a 2-0 pointed brush, i applied the white wash. I used artist´s oils dissolved in turpentine.

7) Excess was removed with cotton swabs with some turpentine. Than, a coat of mat varnish is applied to seal everything.

8) Don´t trust decals over black or very dark colors: silvering is common. I masked the walk lines and painted them red.

9) The underside markings were also masked and painted. The wells were painted with Tamiya Titanium acrylic colors.

10) The panel lines were highlighted in white. If you think it´s overdone, apply a coat of the base color dissolved on 90% X20A thinner.

Technical problems: To wash or paint panel lines?

Weathering is a matter of opinion. However, some extra detail while finishing a kit can bring up a nice paint work and make the model look less like a toy. Personally, i like to keep weathering under control. I frequently find some kits with overdone weathering on the internet.

For me, the major problem is working with oil paints. It is always a mess! Wash is a technique i can´t perform very well. I´ve tried to work with water based paint, but the results were frustrating. So i started to look for some other material that would highlight panel lines. In a office supplies store, i found the Pentel 0,3mm pencil. It has the right size to fit in the panel lines. The graphite will then paint the panel line and you will end up with a nice and clean recessed panel line on your model, with no oil paint and nothing to clean after. The problem is that after the line is drawn, the graphite leves a metallic finish. This kept my tecnique in the shelve for a long time.

Recently, i got a bottle of Tamiya X19 smoke paint. I saw the possibility to dilute the paint and applie it over the panel line with the airbrush to eliminate the metallic finish. It worked like a charm! So i am presenting here my technique of painting panel lines rather than washing them. I don´t know if anyone has writen about this before. I thought that it would nice to present it here as an alternative to oil paint work on recessed panel lines.

So here you see the process step by step in a 1/48 scale Italeri (ex-ocidental) spitfire:

1) The pentel 0,3mm pencil:

2) The basic color applied to the kit, with  highlights on the center of the panels:

3) The panel lines painted with the Pentel pencil on the left wing. The right wing is unpainted to show the difference:

4) The X19 soke is then airbrushed over the panel lines. You can see the difference between the two wings. On the left side, just the pencil. To the right, the graphite with the soke painted over.

5) To tone down the weathering, the base color is applied over the the finished paint work. It must be diluted to about 9-1 thinner to paint ratio.

6) The same technique is used to weather the upper surface.

7) Everything ready and sealed under future, just waiting for the decals.

It works nice in other scales...

and different subjects!