This is the first time I am using PE parts on my Dragon 1/32 P51D. The instructions are a few degrees less than helpful and I need some help.
The kit comes with PE parts for the instrument panel, air intake grille and seat-belts. I don’t think the grills and seat-belts are going to be an issue, but I cant figure out the best way to do the instrument panel insert. Has anyone done this kit. In addition, it comes with a clear instrument panel which I am assuming is an optional piece. I would really appreciate some advice. The PE part is embossed and I need to get it black with silver detailing.
I am just finishing up a 1/72 Dragon kit with the PE instrument panel. I used the backside of an exacto knife to make it bend into the same shape as the plastic backing piece, then painted it the background colour, then drybrushed the dials etc., and picked out a couple of tiny items with a brush. Any help??
You paint PE as you would any other part. The grilles and instrument panel may require some trimming to fit! Especially the dash panel insert piece. I’ve built two of these kits including this one which I did up as Bob Hoovers famous Ole Yeller which he flew at airshows during the '70s & '80s
Thanks for the help. I’ll try these suggestions. The kit includes really good detail decals for each instrument so all I will need to do is get the instrument frames and dial edges properly done. The tricky bit seems to be that the panel embossing is very slight, so dry brushing is kind of tricky. I was plannint on painting it silver for a base, then black over that and the doing a light sanding or buffing to make the silver show through the high spots, then clear coat, decal set, decal, decal sol, and another gloss or flat clear laquer.
The markings are on the inside of the gauge face, inside of the bezel ring. When reducing a instrument face that has a line that is less than a 1/4" wide in reality down to 1:32 it would be finer than a human hair at .0078 something the human eye would never see.
Its a matter of contrasting blacks…flat with glossy or semi glossy. If you have a decal to represent the instrument face, you don’t need to create a white or silver ring around it…they aren’t that color!
So many otherwise great models are detracted by poorly done instrument panels. Subtle says more in scale!
I know they aren’t silver. I don’t use it to get it silver. I usually do a wet sand of the piece when the paint is still a bit tacky. If I do it right, I get a bit of graying as you would on older instruments which have had a bit of usage and sun bleaching. This set off the contour of the panel a bit better. But I don’t completely down to the silver surface. I’ll try and shoot an image when I’m finished with it so you can see what I mean.
Hey Hawk, I should have said “very very very light dry-brushing”. Yep, obviously anything reflective is gone. Up until the past few years I built almost totally 1/72 scale, so the difference between “different blacks” is really hard to see, so I often gave them just enough dry-brushed silver to catch a little light so I could see it. I wasn’t all that worried about the glare my 1/72 pilots would have to deal with!! [H]
I’ve found that a very light drybrushing of a more subtle silver - I use Floquil Old Silver personally - yields a nice fading effect without making the IP look like it got the chrome trim package.
This forum for many is a learning resource, so I try to convey facts when and where appropriate. [8-|]
As I mentioned subtle in scale is more…the smaller the scale the less one will be able to see.
Cockpit placards in a real aircraft are sometimes hard to read! Let alone in 1:72 or 1:144! but there are modelers who insist they put them in.
I once gave a guy crap about his plethora of placards in and outside of his model. They did add character to the model…but you should have seen his expression when I told him he’d probably be disqualified because he used the wrong font for the lettering. PRICELESS! [:^)]
Try using a little White Out liquid to paint the gauge face first. Let it cure. Then use the appropriately colored ultra fine point marker to draw in the colored lines around the border. Let cure! Then fill in the rest with black marker. Leave a few white spots to replicate numbers and or marker bars.
Okay, it looks like it’s going to work fairly well. Once the silver dried, I tried mixing few of your suggestions. I finally managed with some subtle black shades and some very fine sanding work, to get a fairly smooth finish with a hint of graying along he edges of the instruments. It has than nice worn look like old and well used instruments do. I am now going to very very carefully put on the instrument dial decals and then seal and flat coat the entire thing. Now I have to get past an annoying engine mount issue. Just once I would like to open a kit where simple things like engine mounts on the frame actually lined up correctly…
