I joined the fuselage halves and wings, now its getting close to paint, I want this model to look great, I’m going to set it up with the pilot walking to/from the plane on a tarmac and maybe even the ladder, I was going to detail the cockpit but for whatever reason I just couldn’t get it to work. I tried using my own methods and ones I’ve seen on here, but in the end I tried the instrument panel decals, its mediocre at best so having the open cockpit probably wont be happening. So I need to make this paint awesome, problem I run into to is the order in which to paint things. The back is bare metal/burnt metal close to the engines but the rest is green/brown camo scheme. Also the wheel wells, I’ve always had trouble keeping those tidy paint wise. Any advice on the order to do things is much appreciated.
I think I know somewhere in the area of 50 dedicated Phantom builders,and I bet they use 50 different painting methods
I do my own SEA camo Phantoms this way,I get a good primer surface down, the underside gray if possible, then I spray the wheel wells, I cut out foam adhesive sheet to stick down into the wheel wells as a mask, then I mask off what is going to be the metal areas behind the engines, painting from light to dark, I paint the Tan, then the two Greens, then mask off and paint any trim colors needed on the fuselage or tail tip, the gear doors or spoilers can be done at any time, with the white and the gray
when I have all the painted areas finished, I mask those off to avoid overspray, then do the metal work on the fuselage,the tails get done whenever I have the spare minutes to do them, before or after the fuselage, it doesn’t matter
this order might not be the same as others do it,but, this way, I never have to touch the metal areas after they are painted, so I don’t have to worry about any “fragile paint” problems if I used a Metalizer or etc
others will chime in, I am sure,and you can then design your own 51st order of painting, lol
Rex
whats a good method to do the 3 different colors? I want that fluid like flow to the different colors but taping seems like its to angular…I tried silly putty but that didn’t work that great, lines weren’t as solid as I was hoping and I really have no idea how to get the 3 colors to work well, I’m going to have to give it a primer and start over.
also I’m just using model masters acrylic paint. I also have some of the vallejo airbrush colors.
an older method than the “silly putty rope” trick was to cut out pattern masks of low tack masking tape, you draw out your masks on paper, cut tape to fit what will in sections, lay a piece of string, thread, etc, just behind the edges of your masking tapes,assemble your tape pieces to match your pattern, then fill in the areas you don’t want painted
the thread holds the tape just very slightly above the model surface
you paint your gray underside color,mask off that line,then paint the Tan, then make masks and paint the lightest green, then mask again and do the darker green
when you peel off your masked layers,you have a sort of almost sharp, almost fuzzy line for each color boundry
another way it was done was to rubber cement the threads along the underside of paper/cardstock masks, then cut out the center of the masks to enable taping in place,I never used that method, the Pic-U-Knead it product came out after I read this one and before I used it,but, it seems like less work than the tape method I used and described in the beginning of this post