So I’m in the midst of painting Revell’s 1/48 B-25 with my airbrush. The plane is fairly big with lots of odd angles and recesses and hard to reach places. So I generally hold the model in one hand and spray it, turning the model around, as I need, to change the angle of attack. But in doing so, there is always the problem of finger prints and breaking off little pieces, like the machine guns, as I go. I tried just leaving it on the bench and spraying it without handling it but I find I can’t get as much control or the appropriate angle that way, especially with such a large model. (I guess large scale is subjective, since I don’t usually tackle models this big, its large to me but may not be to other people)
So how do you all paint your models with a good level of control and accuracy but without the finger prints and broken bits?
Get a length of welding rod, heavy fencing wire of straighten out a coathanger & fashion a stand;
Fold it about 45dergees in at the centre, this will form your base, at about 15>20cm back from the bend, fold two vertical uprights from the remainder, retain about 20cm for the uprights & bend the remainder parallel to the base & chop these at about 15cm (in elevation it would look like a C & in plan it would look like an M)
You now have 2 15cm rods that are about 20cm above & paralell to the deck - the rods can be easily slid into the nacelle’s of a twin to hold it,or into front/rear or side mounted intakes or exhausts. The whole arrangement can the be bent / twisted to get the model to the precise angle you require. Whatever side you do first doesn’t require the use of this, but if it is sitting in when you complete your first side, you can just turn the whole model around & sit it down on the stand to continue painting.
I have used this method from a 1/72 BAE Hawk, up to a 1/72 XB-70 & it worked fine on both.
Leave off anything that can get broken till after everything is painted and decaled. Make yourself a rig to hold the model. You can use a coat hanger to bend up something, wooden dowels, copper tubing etc. If you look through my blog, the link is in my signature below you see various techniques I use to hold and handle the models as I work on them.
Stands! Of course, why didn’t I think of that? [slaps forhead with open palm] Hmmm, I’ll have to scrounge around the house for some items to build my own. I have a feeling the hanger count in my closet is going to drop dramatically. Can’t take too many though…the wife will notice. If this works out for me, I don’t know what I’ll do. I was getting so used to finding random finger prints, it’s like ‘Where’s Waldo’. Having a model without one would be refreshing!
I wear nitril gloves on holding hand, and in addition to not leaving fingerprints, I can spray very close to my hand without any scrubbing paint away later! [:)]
I bought a wooden lazy susan and 1/4 dowel. I drilled 1/4" holds in the lazy susan and cut the dowel to 6" lengths. You can glue ant type of end, the end that the model rests on, on the tips. Rotate and paint.
This won’t help for the bottom but it works great for spraying it overall.
This is piece of 5/8" particle board that I cut into a circle and drilled multiple holes in it.
Then I glued a piece of cardboard to the bottom to make it slide easier and to stop the pegs I stick into it. The pegs are nothing more than hollow plastic rod that you can buy from the hobby shop. I put pieces of surgical tubing on the tips of the rods to help grip the area where I sit the model on it. In this photo it is in my drying booth that I use to cure the paint fast after spraying with Tamiya acrylics.
