As you know almost all 1/72 kits, specially the older kits, come with no seatbelts, not even molded in plastic… the photo-etched seat belts are too expensive for me, and I’ve read somewhere about people who made they own seat belts, made of tape or something like that, but I want to know exactly how. I am detailing my 1/72 He-111H-6’s seat (from an Italeri kit), and I want to make it looks better, so I want to know how to make this seat belts a little more realistic… thanks in advance…
Yes you can make seatbelts from tape but I find that it dosen’t look very realistic and it is hard to get it to look to scale.
I personaly like to use lead foil [From the tops of some wine bottles], this is a nice flexible and somewhat soft metal which is easy to bend into a range of shapes.
First: You have to cut a long stripe of it using a metal ruler as a guide and just using your eye to guess the right scale for your He111.
Then after you’ve cut the strips , chop them up to the right length of the seatbelt for each seat,glue them onto the seats in natural poses using super glue and then paint after the base coat of the seat has been painted on.
Between the sticking and gluing you could make little belt buckles using fine wire , but I find that its reasonably complecated in that scale and it takes quite a long time, so I usually just paint them after painting the belts using silver!
So that is a way tha you could make seatbeltsout of lead foil and I hope that its usefull to you!?!
Hi zeroenna, I found this link that leds to a tutorial on how to enhance seats. Just scroll down a bit and you’ll reach the part about seat belts. I usually make my buckles from aluminum foil and even thought it doesn’t look great it still looks better than with nothing at all (and low cost)[:D]! BTW, the site uses photeched parts but it also gives you suggestions for other lost cost alternatives.
Here’s the link:
http://www.briansmodelcars.com/tutorials/tutorial.asp?TutorialID=27&CurPage=1
Hope this helps!
i cut strips of sticking plasters (band aid), and then bend a thin piece of either plastic or metal around the width of of the strip to represent the buckles, if you want to have a look at an example check out my web page in my favourites, the BF109 is a good example of the technique, and also the lysander, near the middle and bottom of the page.
the good thing about using the sticking plaster is that you don’t need glue to hold them in place.
Best of luck.
Alan
I use the following, and they both work equally for me, so here goes:
Method 1: take a 3-5 inch length of Tamiya masking tape (1/4" width). I paint the whole lenght the base color for the seatbelt/harness. Since I use Tamiya and Xtracrylics paints it usually takes three to four coats depending on the color. I then cut this into (maximum) 1mm width and 3-5 inch lengths (ps. use a very sharp #11 blade, preferably a brand new blade). Using a cheap school compass (or dividers) I measure how much I need for the harness and seat belts. I also use silver paint for the buckles.
Method 2: is very similar. I take the the foil that covers a new tin of coffee, and cut a strip from that. I then apply the color and for the buckles I can scratch (very gently) off the paint where the buckles would be. I apply the belt with superglue.
Hope this helps a little bit!
Thanks for the replies… I’ll try them… let’s see which looks better…
You can try Tamiya’s masking tape with small pieces og plastic sheet and thin wire